Doghouse replacement or cover - who's done it?
My FE transit bus has the standard big plastic cover for the engine, which is fairly broken, but still usable. I did some patching up recently to make it as air tight as possible, so it's not terribly "leaky", but my wife and I would really like to change the cover to create a little seating space on the lower side when parked, and add cupholders to the upper part for the driver.
Originally, I had envisioned building a wooden cover over the plastic doghouse cover, which would come in two pieces so you could lift off the lower piece to get to the engine oil dipstick, and remove the upper piece to then remove the entire plastic cover as needed. However, I realized that adding bulk to the front part of the doghouse (the tallest part) on the driver's side would really cramp the driver's space, in particular space to get to the accelerator pedal. This leads me to think that it would be best to just replace the entire cover, but I'm leery of building a new doghouse cover out of, say, wood, when it's covering a very hot part of the vehicle. I had considered covering the inside with metal flashing and automotive engine compartment insulation, but that still doesn't seem perfect.
Anyway, I'm looking for ideas. I didn't find too many older threads with specific solutions for a front engine transit bus cover, which is much larger than the doghouse on a dognose/conventional bus.
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