Sport Hood
When I first saw the scooped hood on a 4Runner at the dealership I thought it was one of the coolest things Toyota had offered from the factory. I was a little disappointed that the scoop didn't actually do anything to let cooler air into the engine, but it still looked great. In 2003 when I was shopping for a 4Runner I couldn't find any Sport Editions with the scooped hood in my area, so I had to settle for one without it. After 4 years of driving the 4Runner in it's stock form, I decided to start Project SportRunner and the scoop hood was at the top of the list.
For this modification you'll need:
Sport Edition Hood available from your
favorite Toyota dealer or body shop
Associated scoop parts (insert, bolts, screen, screen backing, tabs, and hood
skirt)
A good body shop
The scoop hood has multiple pieces. The hood is one part, then there's the scoop insert, then a black insert, a screen, bolts for the insert, and the hood skirt which dampens the road noise. The stock hood skirt won't fit the sport hood very well, believe me I tried. The skirt is optional, but I wanted a totally factory look so I went ahead and got it the correct one.
I looked around for one in a salvage yard with no luck. I checked the online parts places as well as aftermarket versions. I then went to a local body shop with an excellent reputation and told them what I was wanting to do. They quoted me a price for the hood and associated parts in both OEM and aftermarket. Their price was very close to the cheapest online price I found and the OEM version wasn't very much more than the aftermarket version. The body shop offered a lifetime warranty on the paint work for OEM parts, so I went that route since the difference in price over aftermarket was negligible. The total for the hood and associated pieces was a little over $400, but the paint work was pretty expensive, but worth it to be done right.
Doing this through a body shop made things much simpler as I didn't have to worry about shipping damage to the hood, transporting the hood to a painter, etc. I dropped Project SportRunner off to the body shop and 2 days later had it back and it was perfect. The lines on the hood are perfectly symmetrical, the hood opens and closes smoothly, and the paint job is superb even on the under side. You'd never know this hood didn't come on the vehicle.
Make sure you get a very good painter to do the work as it'll likely require what they call "blending" of the front fenders in order to get a perfect color match. I was thrilled with the work and Project SportRunner was really starting to take shape from an aesthetic perspective.
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