Don't give up Dude, I want to see the end result.

A couple more suggestions to keep you up at night:

1. Use the foam around the stock inlet and just drill a bunch of small holes in the hood to emulate the AEV grill. ( hope your wife won't see them )

2. I think I read in another thread that some guy removed the rubber seal at the back / cowl area to let out some heat to keep things cooler under the hood.

3. You can try modifying the hinges / latches to lift the hood a bit to let more air in and out. ( an old VW trick )

Keep us posted.

 

Jk_Joe...it's not just and old VW trick. Newer vw's have a cool item called a VAG-com which reads the OBDII system. So we can actually look at actual data from just about every senor on the car. One of those sensors was an Intake Air Temp sensor used for air density with the MAP sensor. With that sensor some people found that removing the rubber strip at the back of the engine bay reduced intake temps pretty significantly especially off the light. Granted this was in a turbo car so underhood temps could get REALLY bad.