Trey33088

Sry upfront for the long post; skip down for the improvement idea.

The previous owner of my car installed a CC ZR style hood. I love the style, but I'm not too thrilled about the finish on the inside. Crappy edges, fiberglass mat with gelcoat exposed, bubbles in the gelcoat, etc.

I'm installing new CC ZR style fenders all the around (same crummy interior finish, but great exposed on the outside), and the hood I had didnt match the color of the new fenders. The resin yellowed a little and given the hood a slight golden tone; 100% unnoticeable by itself, but very evident with new carbon fenders.

Bought a new hood to match, same style, and the finish is worse inside... I will update with pics when I get back to the shop.

So the point of all this: I want to improve the damn thing. I like the shape, I like the look, and I liked the price point (even though its glass reinforced)

The cowl induction channel runs up the middle, but fills the whole inner/outer skin void with air, which exits out that square hole.
View from the cowl down to the vent.
Crappy interior finish... this is the hood that was cleaned up. My new one looks way worse.
1. The inner skin needs to be either smoothed with filler and repainted, or covered in some sort of high temp fabric. Any ideas for a clean, factory looking carpet or vinyl material?

2. The area inside the cowl needs to be cleaned up with filler and smoothed.... looks like garbage inside as it is.

3. Inner vent edge needs massive amounts of smoothing and rounding. The P.O. of my first hood covered the edge in door sill protector, which looks fantastic.

4. The vent and cowl tunnel... i think its a bad design and a problem. At idle, it helps hot air vent out which is great. At speed though, the vent is a low pressure area that uses a venturi effect to pull hot air out of the engine bay, but the the cowl tunnel is fed from a high pressure area that forces air into the engine bay at the same time, directly where the vent should be removing air.
One of two things must be happening: 1: The cowl feeds air through the tunnel, some of which is then immediately sucked out at thr vent while the rest flows down through the bay to exit underneath or out the gills. 2. The pressurized air in the tunnel reaches the vent, meets the wall of air rushing out of the vent from the engine bay, then just spalls. Seeing as the cowl is MUCH larger than the vent, my bet is on #1 because the larger CFM of the air moving forward is more than the much smaller vent can handle.
The fix: block off the cowl. Im either going to fill it with foam (see below) or figure out some way to open at idle and close at speed like the factory cowl hood pop up vents on old muscle cars.

5. Stiffness... this hood is flexible. VERY flexible. I want to fill it with expanding foam. Most expanding foam is hydroscopic though... Its fiberglass inside, so no rust to worry about. Im just worried that water will build up over time making it much heavier. Anyone know what to use or how to stiffen it?
If I fill it with foam, I plan on trying to keep the cowl to vent channel and just putting a block off plate on the ends.

That's pretty much what I'm working with. Any ideas or advice?