I just took mine off, since it rains like once a month here in Colorado Springs.

 

OK PLEASE READ!!!!!

This thread is a good way to strip your hood vent but I have to add something. CLEAR COAT!!!! once you strip your hood vent with paint stripper please do yourself a favor and clear coat it. It takes an hour and it is worth it and let me tell you why.

See my hood vent wasnt fading, what happened is mine was chipping (picture included) so i stripped my paint off and was going to just leave it that way and not clear coat it until i noticed something. When I stripped my paint off, I noticed a discoloration where the paint was missing, not extremely noticeable but noticable to me ( and i am sure that if it was your Evo it would be noticable to you too). So I hand to sand blast the discolored part (lucky for me i have access to a sand blaster). So if you dont spend the $6.00 and take the 1 hour to clear coat, then over the next couple months your hood vent will start to discolor.
Now I live in sioux city, Ia and it doesnt rain alot but see I like ot have a clean car so i wash mine on an average 3 to 4 times a week, and wax mine once every two weeks, so i know that the discoloration wasnt from a dirty car.
Think about it this way, a lot people strip there hood vents cuz they fade, welll what do you think will happen to it if you dont clear coat it? I am sure a lot of you people are going ot say "... But drewblueeye, it is stainless steel." well look up the word stainless steel in the dictionary. infact here is the exact definition in my chemistry lab book

Stainless Steel-In metallurgy, stainless steel (inox) is defined[1] as a ferrous alloy with a minimum of 10.5% chromium content. The name originates from the fact that stainless steel does not stain, corrode or rust as easily as ordinary steel.

Notice the word that is bold 'Easily', stainless steel does rust just not as fast.

and if you do decide to clear coat then i got a semi-gloss. the gloss just looked to shiny for a black car.

I will post pictures of the finished product installed once it dries.

 

aznfballer79: Very nice job! For future refferences, I'd recommend going to www.photobucket.com to upload and post pictures because after you upload pictures onto there, under the picture, they provide 3 different links you can just copy and paste for posting onto forums/myspace/etc. The only catch is that you must resize your pics before uploading or else the pics will come up HUGE on the site you're posting on. Other than that, it's really simple and quick to use.

 

here is the finished product, that has been clear coated with semi-gloss

 

Damn that looks pretty sweet!

 

I did the exact same thing. But we get even less rain here in SoCal.

 

+1

 

On my 03 TB Evo my hood vent started fading after about a year. It was raining a bunch and snowing there so it faded faster I guess. So I went to Kragen, bought some silver metallic spray paint, and painted the top portion only. I left the bottom portion black. Till the day I traded my VIII for the IX (Feb 06) which is about a year and a half? It is still shiny like the day I painted it. No cracks or chips in the paint. I didn't clear coat it either...

 

Good metallurgy lesson. Now; please define aluminum.... since that is what the hood vent is made of.

 

Same here... Mines all nice and shiny now!!!

 

Good Sunday project, guess I'm not cleaning my garage today!!!

 

+1

 

you guys are working backwards... lol cause some of us want the look of the black hood vent under the mesh. i'd glady trade the one i got with my apex silver to someone with a black one. it really is personal preference.

 

um yeah, that's great and all. however the vents sole function is heat "extraction." put 5 bucks in the gas tank