Jerry Feather

Go take a closer look. You probably need one. The one you have does not fit and it is likely broken and very cheap thin plastic by the Factory.

ReDesign by FEATHER

About these 928 Cowl Covers . . . . I decided early on that the Cowl Cover is probably the least noticed thing about a 928. Then after I began to acquire a few of them I also began to notice that the Cowl Covers were in pretty bad shape quite often and that they were made of very cheap and thin plastic. Having gotten into making other things for the 928 out of ABS plastic I decided to see what I could do about the Cowl Covers.

I first did some research to see just what the history was with the Cowl Covers and learned that there were about 5 versions of them made by the Facgory. One thing that I kind of learned to susect is that the Cowl Covers in the 928 were in fact some kind of after thought. That was kind of confirmed later when I got into working up Cowl Covers for the 924/944/968 cars. The 924 and early 944 did not even have Cowl Covers. With the 928 the Cowl 'Covers were first only a simple piece of plastic covering about 3/5ths of the cowl area. The next version covered about 75 to 80 percent of the cowl area. Then somewhere in the early to mid 80s the Cowl Covers began to fit the full length of the cowl area at least out to the hood hinges.

I think that the first full length version may have started with the 87 S4 and it had a couple of unique kind of raised flat areas at the rear corners which soon disappeared. It also had a little rectangular raised area on the drivers side that was cut out for access to the intensive washer bottle that had been moved from up in front of the radiator to the cowl area. That access port provision remained a feature for all the covers from 87 on thru 95 even though the GTS cars had eliminated the intensive washer provision entirely. The last version of the Cowl Cover from the Factory has a big gouge cut down thru the middle of it to allow for better water flow over the cover.

The cowl area of the 928 contains the WS wiper mechanism and the HVAC system. The front of the area is the engine firewall. At the base of the cowl area and thru the firewall close to the outboard ends of the area there are two drain holes. The purpose fo the Cowl Cover is to direct water flow that is mostly swept off the WS and down into the cowl area to the front of the cowl area and over to just above the drain holes. The front corners of the Cowl Covers have openings provided for that purpose. The rest of the water off the WS is swept over to the sides and into the rain gutters there, but that is another story.

What I decided to do was to replicate the Cowl Covers in two versions. One version would have the provision for the intensive washer opening and the other version would be without. The version without would then apply to the early cars up through 86 and to the later cars from 92 to 95 where the intensive washer provision was eliminated. However, for some reason I decided to also try to replicate the S4 version with the two little flat raised areas at the rear corners, but I didn't have a very good original to go by to do it. I also thought that I could be able to form about 4 of these Covers at a time in the Vacu-forming setup I had to use at my friend's Plastic Place, so I devised 5 different forms to use so that I could mix and match them to meet the demand at whatever it turned out to be.

Two things happened: One was that it turned out that forming only two Covers at a time was ideal; and later I found that the demand for the version without the intensive washer provision sold at the rate of about 2 or 3 to one of the intensive washer version. The end result is that I really only needed 3 forms to meet the need. The other thing that happened is that I learned that the Cowl Covers for the RHD drive cars are a reverse configuration from the LHD cars. That led to me converting two of the forms to RHD. One of them turned out to be the one with the little raised areas at the rear corners, although I had formed I think 6 of those with that form, and I think I still have all 6 of them. They are rare, but I don't know just why I am saving them. Maybe from a Concours standpoint they would be suitable for an early S4s which are the only cars they came on. I think the form with the raised areas turned out to become the RHD version without the intensive washer provision.

Overall I changed the design a little bit mainly to eliminate the big gouge the Factory put in their current form. I raised the little fense or border around the air intake and narrowed the center hump a little so that the water could flow better accross that area and not get into the HVAC, but without the need to cut the goughe in it. I think that worked out fine.