[njsteve]

With the issues with the site for the past few days I wasn't able to upload any updates. So here's some stuff.

I painted the shaker dome in the same matching chunky-sparkley-argenty paint that the grill was done in. It came out nicely though my recycling trash can/painting dolly is now kind of sparkley from overspray and is at present, the envy of the neighborhood.

Anyway, here's a couple shots of what the underside Rube-Goldberg mechanism looks like. There are two fresh air doors: one that lets air into the shaker grills and one that has a bypass trapdoor to the underside of the baseplate for rainy weather. The doors connect via a linkage arm which is connected to a repurposed vent cable, that goes through the shaker metal baseplate and connects to a bellcrank on the underside of the baseplate. Another actual vent cable (with the word "vent" covered over with a red foil label that says "Fresh Air" connects to that and goes through the firewall and under the center of the dash. When you manually operate that Fresh Air vent cable, it moves whichever door you intended to open or close for whatever purpose you deem necessary.

Final photo is of the two piece baseplate - the metal outer ring with the trap door hole, and the unobtanium, single four barrel, Carter AVS baseplate for a 1970 only, 340 only, shaker hood 'cuda. (1971 used a Carter Thermoquad which used a different height baseplate). Interesting trivia fact: Fram made all the shaker dome parts up in Canada, for the E-body cars, hence the "Made in Canada" stamp on the outer baseplate.

One thing you have probably noticed are the seven 1/2" holes in the outer perimeter of the outer shaker baseplate ring. I noticed these as well when I went to bolt the shaker down and the bolts fell right through the holes. Well, it turns out that this baseplate was among a bunch that slipped out of Fram back in the 1970's without having the circular, flanged, nut inserts tack welded in place. Luckily Dave had an extra three and half pairs of the "special nuts" and I was able to use some JB weld and set them in place, after this photo was taken.