Seems to me that in my travels on the net, this issue has been raised here and there. Some people have stated that as long as the boost doesn't go above 6 psi, then even the stock airbridge should hold up OK. Some disagreed, and suggested some alternatives that are much more robust.

Thinking I would rather not have to worry about such things as exploding airbridges, I took some suggestions at heart and purchased a BBK aluminum airbridge for my Z prior to the STS kit install. Quite honestly, the airbridge is built like a rock, and I suppose it will stand up to quite a bit of abuse without folding.

However, when I got home after the install, I noticed that my hood is sitting funny. A larger gap between the hood and the driver's side headlight certainly caught my eye. So in looking closer, it appears that the BBK airbridge is pressing up against the hood when it is closed. The reason this is happening is because the airbridge itself is sitting about an inch closer to the throttle body than it was designed for, and an inch OFF of the top of the radiator.

Now I did not hear anyone mention this predicament when the BBK airbridge was mentioned for use with the STS kit. I looked at it, and it appears that there aren't many options available to make this fit correctly and not press upon the hood. There just doesn't appear to be enough free space between the intercooler, MAF, and the throttle body to move it to where it needs to be on top of the radiator.

I spoke to the guy who installed the kit for me, and he is going to try to work on a solution via relocating the MAF between the airbridge and the throttle body to put the airbridge back where it should be. But seems to me I read somewhere that the MAF was MOVED from that position to before the airbridge during one of the model year changes. So I'm thinking maybe that was done for a good reason.

So I'm looking for some thoughts here. Certainly I can't be the first and only person to have noticed this problem, so what solutions did other people come up with for this problem?

I have to admit that I am not real comfortable having the hood deformed by pressing against that airbridge. So I would like to come up with a solid solution pretty quickly....

Thanks for any input you guys can give me on this...

 

I saw some guys on here trimmed the lip/edge and moved it down...
i think tatommy did...not sure of the spelling, do a bbk search

 

I could be wrong but Jesse_Boyer modified his BBK bridge as well to fit correctly.

 

Can you post pics? I'm sure we can all come together and figure out a good solution!! Dan