Digging through my shed, I found an 11" K&N filter with a 5" element. I was taking the car back to my fabricator, as he had agreed to mount and paint the hood for me, and I figured that would be better than the tiny 6" breather I'd been using with two stacked 2" elements.

So, it was back to the old scoop, as more of a necessity than by choice. The scoops finally arrived from VFN a day before Brian called and said the car was ready to go.

With the hood on the car, it was time to deal with all the other issues that I had ignored for the last 10 months. Chief among those was the decision of what class to run. The ladder bars limit my choices to Modified, or Pro Street, and neither of those classes are broken down by small block or big block, so I'm at a disadvantage already. The fact that I've been able to snag a 2nd place plaque, and a third place plaque out of my four trips had more to do with the number of finishers than it did with how competitive my combo was in the NA classes.

So I asked myself, "even if I showed up at the 2016 edition of Drag Week, ran 10.30's all week in Pro Street NA, and squeaked out another 3rd place plaque would that make me happy or satisfied"?
The answer, being completely honest with myself, was a resounding "NO".

That 9.86 in the Shootout had proven to me that the Valiant was a legit 9 second street car, and my goal for 2016 would be to prove that to the rest of the world. So, the nitrous would be on for the whole trip, and I would be in Modified Power Adder...a class full of 7 second turbo monsters that were going to eat the Valiant for breakfast...oh well. Now that we had settled on a class and a goal, the first hurdle to jump was to get the cage certed.

Pics: the new hood.