On one of my patriots, I wanted to go faster, so I actually cut the inlets out and built a thin duct that lead to the tailpipe exit, I really don't think it made a hill of beans difference to be honest. But you could always do that, leave the face of the inlet open out to the tailpipe, it did make a neat whistling sound on my patriot LOL. I think if you just made an inlet that stuck out like 3/4", and had the face of it slope back, you could achieve that inlet look and keep it aerodynamic and not increase the drag enough to notice. It looks like you have a pretty wide fuse shape there to start with which will be a little draggy anyway. Either way, I enjoy seeing peoples own creations, it's good to see that in a world dominated by ARF's, there are still designers and builders out there
