Fiberglass hoods....Pins yes or no?

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I have pins on my car . I diddnt put them on till i was doing 50 and the latch poped. Thankfully the safty hook on the latch caught. No i use pins and the stock latch. I think MR. gasket sells pins for like 20 dollars and they come with wire to hold the pins so you dont loose them.
 
Ive seen a whole boat load of cars with out pins that have fiberglass hoods. I thought mine was secure untill i was going to school about 2 weeks ago and looked down for a second and looked up and POW!!! primer hood in my face... luckily i was only going 45 and the cowl of the hood came back and hit the wipers and dident come back fare enought to hit window... only minimal damage to wiper blades/panel before window and it chiped my hood.

USE HOOD PINS!!!!
unless you got spare windows and hoods
 
i have a stormin normin hood that i have yet to get painted..i also have some ford racing hood pins in a box in the garage..should i have them installed before or after its painted? also...any ideas how much it will cost to paint?
 
black92gt said:
89sleeper, just one question.. I have that same hood, and it hits the winshield wipers, do you just deal with that or did you fix it in some way?

Thanks.

I sanded the hood down on the back of the cowl carefully until it just cleared. I spent a good day sanding and fitting before I painted it.
 
I had a fiberglass L-88 hood on my Camaro. It bolted to the hinges and had pins in the front. One night someone stole the pins. I even had oil and temp gauges under the cowl vent. On the way to work that morning, the hood flew off, did a few summersaults and landed in the road. All the while hot oil was splashing onto my windshield and through the sunroof. Luckily there was only a small dent in the roof, but I had to make the hood a pin-on after that.

Pins are insurance that your investment does not get wrecked (hood, cowl, windshield, roof, possibly more. They are totally up to you.
 
5spd GT said:
So is there any ways to keep your fiberglass hood from flying off without using pins...(I would like a real clean look)...3 inch cowl waiting to go on...

Just using my head..

Make sure u have a good latch assembly, no hood pins. Make, or aquire a small lanyard, like the ones that come with the hood pins, and rig up something underneth the hood. If the latch does fail, the hood may fly open a few inches but the lanyards, which will be connected from the front underside of the hood(somehow), to a mounting point near the radiator, will prevent the hood from opening. Of course they will be easily removable, like rapping one end around a bolt, but it will be up to you to be sure they are installed and secured properly....Just use ur imagination, its not hard to create a fixture to keep your hood down from the inside.
 
i have the same hood and the same pins. i had them installed before it was painted so nothing would accidently "slip" and scratch my paint. install them the right way also, dont put them in place of the hood rubber stops.
 
1991vert said:
i have the same hood and the same pins. i had them installed before it was painted so nothing would accidently "slip" and scratch my paint. install them the right way also, dont put them in place of the hood rubber stops.

You CAN put them in place of the rubber hood stops. Just install a few rubber grommets over the nut that hold the hood pin assembly in place. Thats what iv got done, easy and simple. If the hood doesnt sit right, add or remove grommets.
 
you can do that but it looks like crap. plus with the flex of the fiberglass and not having the right height on the rubber going over the pins can cause the hood to crack. plus it looks stupid with 2 hood pins so close together. just my opinion....
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if you were to do it your way with that hood, the pins would be like right where the hood scoops do that wavy thing coming down to the nose and they'd be like lopsided. believe me i had my uncle look at it and he said it'd look best this way even though i showed him how to do it your way.
 
no way...it looks alot better with the pins where the factory hood bumpers are...and i have the same hood as 1991vert and the factory hood bumpers are about two inches inward from where yours are...there not where the hood waves at all