The New Project: Part Deux!

[njsteve]

With the help of the wife and daughter I swapped the NOS hood onto the car (that was entertaining to say the least). I then set the hood in the right spot and readjusted all the gaps on the fenders. I noticed that I had both peaks on the hood at too high of an angle so I had to add another 3/8" of an inch of the fiberglass gel to the underside of the tips and then sanded away the top sides until they matched the contours of the fenders, exactly. I then recruited the wife and daughter to once again to pull the hood off so I could do the finish work on the added material on the bottom side. After getting the hood off, they promptly went shopping.

That gave me time finish up the underside and also trial fit the screens into the scoop openings and drill the two mounting screw holes. There are actually built-in bosses that the screws go in to on the inside of the scoop area. There was also a bunch of excess bonding adhesive from the original manufacturing process that had to be ground away so the grills would slide into the factory slots. Dremel time once again.

Once the "hood crew" returned from their shopping spree they assisted in installing the hood back on the car. Here is the finished product before I drop the hood off at the local bodyshop to get it prepped and painted black.







And this is the best part: the hood is dead flat with no bow in the center like all the other 40+ year old hoods out there. Right now I have the original hood sitting on four drums spanned by 2x4s with 30 lbs of weight in the middle to try to flatten the old hood back into shape. We will see what happens.