New hood ( Well chuffed )

[Moraystag]

Fitted my new hood from VMAD and finally finished thelast few tweaks to get it up and down easily.

All in all well chuffed and it has certainly been well worth having it done by Chris. Many thanks for all his help and the few phone calls that I had to make while fitting,he was more than than patient, andhelpfull. God, it's refreshing to deal witha person who is willing to help.



Mike

[Guest]

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Good to hear Mike.

[martin]

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Nice one Mike, it's about time you had a bit of luck / good service. Martin.

[Pirate]

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I've also just fitted a new hood supplied byVMAD - looks great, good workmanshipand as you say the other major advantage is the support and knowledge that Chris also also provides if needed.

Thumbs up from me too :dude:

[Moraystag]

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Pirate how did you get on with the fitting. I struggled a bit but nothing to do with the hood, more of my novice approach, but got there in the end.

I have just taken it down to see if it's stretching a wee bit, and found that when I disengage the plunger and try to fold the back section up it will not go all the way to the catches. Undid the front section and pulled it back a bit and bingo no problem. Not sure if I may have to tweek it some more now.



Mike

[Pirate]

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Mike, I had a couple of issues that Chris helped me with.

The first was that the torsion arms that fit under theretaining clips must have been longer on my old Mk1 frame as they only just reached the clips with this frameand kept popping out. To overcome that I got some small bore copper pipe and slid it over the endof the barsto extend them past the retaining clips.

The second problem was that with the front locked down, the rear was a good several inches from being fully down and the plunger locking in position. With being a novice also, I didn't want to force anything and risk bending the frame. Chris confirmed it needs a good sharp confidentpush to lock it down and then left to stretch for a while as it was so tight when new. So I mustered up the confidence,climbedonto the boot and using both hands gave it a good hard sharp shove... hey presto, it locked down.

I have only relesed it a couple of times since and the cover has definitely stretched somewhat, but I still don't have the strength in one arm to lock it down and have to climb on the boot.

It looks lovely and taught though! I have noticed that with the stretching,the side of the hood cover is now right at the rear of theB pillar, but as long as a gap doesn't appear to let water through then I think it's fine for the moment.

The only other issue was a snapped pin on the front LH locking handle, but that was down to me not fully inserting it properly whilst it was under some tension. I've not had a problem with the back section folding up, in fact I was impressed how well the catches work.

All in all I'm very happy with the end result.

Jeremy

[Moraystag]

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Jeremy, I think I may need to alter it i.e. move it down a bit where the bolts are as the holes on the frame itself are elongated, but will do it later once it's stretched a wee bit more. I can live with it foer the time being as it sits on the car well and seems to be getting easyer each time to open and close,although I have'nt opened and closed it more than 4 x times since I finished fitting it last weekend.

Mike

[Pirate]

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Moraystag wrote:

Jeremy, I think I may need to alter it i.e. move it down a bit where the bolts are as the holes on the frame itself are elongated, but will do it later once it's stretched a wee bit more. I can live with it foer the time being as it sits on the car well and seems to be getting easyer each time to open and close,although I have'nt opened and closed it more than 4 x times since I finished fitting it last weekend.

Mike

Taking advice from Chris, I lifted the frame as much as I could and positioned it with the vertical seals just sitting against the rear of the B pillar before tightening the bolts.Thisenabled thehood to sit over the B pillar(just touchingit)rather than being squashed onto the top of it.

Once it was all tightened I had a straight horizontal seal from the B pillar to the front rail, which sits nicely at the top of the door frames.

There are a couple of small gaps in the cornersthat I am concerned driving rain could still get through (only a few mm but you can see light through), but I figure I'lltry it for a while, and if it's a problem in the future I'll change the seals for the sloping onesmentioned in other threads that the doors shut against.

I'm hoping sometime in the next couple of months the car will be ready to go further than my driveway, so then I'll know howgoodthe hoodfit reallyis!

[simonas]

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how long did it take each of you to fit the hood with one person doing the job?

[Moraystag]

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Honestly about 4 x hours and another hour tweaking it later on. You do need two to fit the hood c/w frame until you get some securing bolts in place and then it's fiddle with it until your happy.

[Pirate]

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Yes it's only literally 3 bolts either side. With a second person helping lift it in place it took me less than an hour to get it fitted, and then2 separate evenings about an hour each to adjust and fettle it until happy.