Let's start off here with some background. I recently made friends with some missionaries (Korean missionaries love me, which is weird, but anyway) who know a guy who owns a repair shop. Nothing special, but he does get a good deal on junkyard parts. With the help of my students, I turned that connection into a cheap spare hood and trunk (we haven't cut up the trunk ... yet). Badabing badabang.
So the next thing was to sit down and teach a little about aerodynamics. Areas of high and low pressure, the function of gurney flaps, down force/lift etc. That was interesting, considering I was trying to do it while speaking Korean. When we finished talking and looking at aftermarket hoods on the internet, I turned the kids loose with masking tape, measuring tools and a mandate to design a lift reducing, airflow and cooling enhancing hood that would also feed the custom cold air kit we're building right now. I've never owned a track/autocross car that didn't have cooling problems, so I emphasized requirement number three most. They needed about three hours to get both vents straight and symmetrical, but I think they did a good job.
During the design phase I noticed several recycling centers in the neighborhood, snooped a little bit and found huge piles of scrap metal. About fifteen minutes of begging and petting junkyard cats later, the owners donated 10 pounds of steel in various random shapes. Some stainless steel designed for roofing became our gurney flaps and the skin to a small filing cabinet gave birth to the scoop. I did the cutting and grinding out of concerns for safety, but all the design, drilling, installation, riveting, shaping, hammering etc came from the students.
About the scoop. One of the students spent several hours (somewhat effectively) hammering the tabs flat and true. Probably because he'd designed it in the first place, this kid decided the scoop should be riveted on in five separate locations. I'm relatively certain this part approaches the engine block's levels of rigidity. 
Other stuff. The grey lining you see on the vents is a safety feature designed to keep kids from cutting their fingers on sharp metal edges. I couldn't find any purpose made liners, so we built our own by stripping the insulation off of large gauge electrical wire, wrapping it over the edges and then supergluing it on. Not sure how it's going to work, but worth a try. The stock grill was ugly so we ditched it, but the mounting tabs for the stock grill were even uglier. The kids decided they should join the grill in car parts heaven. We also cut all the sound deadening baffles out of the stock airbox. We'll be painting the whole thing flat black Monday, but I wanted to get the pictures now so you all could see the fabrication process.
Next week we'll make that custom cold air kit (fed from both above and below) and take out a big chunk of exhaust. After that, we'll be doing a brake job (might modify the rotors to a slotted design) and hopefully dropping in some coilovers.
Please let me know if you guys have any budget friendly, not-that-skilled-of-a-mechanic friendly ideas. Thanks.
