As soon as I get my Ohio registration completed, I plan to spend the rest of the summer driving to interview body & paint guys. My doors and trunk fit reasonably well, but my hood's a little wacked. The front, rear, and driver side are quite flush with the body, but the passenger side has a distinct kink in it...every bit of 1/4" (see pic). [It's embarrassing.] Is there any way, like heating for instance, to get this panel flattened out some? What alternatives are there?
Simple fix I put a dark colored towel over it then put a cinder block the towel out in the sun a hot day like today it would take no time to get straight
Before you try and tweak the panel can you see if anything is holding it up. There is a thread in this forum with regards to the hood gas struts not being correct with the factory mounting holes. I think the hood mounting position needs to be shifted back by one mounting hole.
As Useless said you can easily change it's shape.. But the real question is how did it get that way to begin with? Did it get that way while mounted on the car, or was it off of the car? If it was mounted on the car, then figure out how to relieve the stress on the hood (hinges, struts, etc.) so that it doesn't do it again.
The kink is several inches aft of the pneumatic spring mount, so that doesn't seem to be the source of the problem. The hood spent a perfectly unstressed year in the basement, before I got around to it. My guess is that the guys at FFR just took it out of the mold too soon. In fact, I know that they weren't concentrating very hard on my hood lay-up, because the scoop cut-out came apart in two pieces. The adhesive that they put between the layers just barely made it to the scoop cut-out region. Pretty shoddy.
Anyhow, I've backed the car out into the 98 degree, mostly sunny day, put a patch of thin black plastic on the kinked region, and weighted it down flush with the body.
did you glue the scoop with it not on the body.
it could of drawn up from the glue, this appears to be way out and its not the gas struts doing it, i know i am the one that mentioned this issue to F5R when mine pushed the hood up, i don't use the struts, disconnect them and see if it changes anyway, the hook is too far to the cowl for the struts but u never know.
did u put foam tape on the 3/4" hood-body frame?
is the body screwed already to that?
is the body sitting in the right place for the dash support?
normally u see it drawing up near the front, the hinges can bottom out too and draw the front up if touching when closed.
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Just to be sure humor me and take the struts loose then lower the hood. As lmmargheritis mentioned the factory drilled strut bracket mounting holes have been known to be mislocated causing the strut to bottom out and creating this exact hump when latched (I've had it happen on two cars).
Oh BTW, the Mk4 I did had no bonding between the inner and outer layers either. After cutting out the scoop hole I used HSRF to fill the void and join them .
Forget about the below advise and send a photo to Factory 5 and ask for a new hood free of charge. I can't believe their quality control is still Shit. At least mine doesn't have a hump in it but there is over a quart of filler in it to get the POS straight.
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It's fiberglass. Fiberglass does wierd stuff. I think you're getting good advice about releasig the struts and close it just to make absolutely sure they are not a cause. The advise on the cinder block and setting out in the sun for a couple days is also good. You can even help it along by careful use of a heat gun. Just don't get too carried away as excess heat that a heat gun is capable of generating will definately soften fiberglass.
Wow! Lots of good feedback: I'll answer BigLeo's great list:
did you glue the scoop with it not on the body? Not on the body but not stressed at all; certainly not like it would take to create this kink.
it could of drawn up from the glue? It was drilled and clecoed for the temporary rivets before the glue was applied.
this appears to be way out and its not the gas struts doing it, i know i am the one that mentioned this issue to F5R when mine pushed the hood up, i don't use the struts, disconnect them and see if it changes anyway, the hook is too far to the cowl for the struts but u never know. I'll try that today.
did u put foam tape on the 3/4" hood-body frame?
is the body screwed already to that? The FFR foam was worthless. It didn't make frame-to-body contact along about 90% of the lines. And, yes, the body was down as far as possible, as defined by the dash support frame edges and the 3/4" rails at the radiator support. So, during body pre-fitting, I measured the gap and put thicker (McMaster) foam strips in. If I had used screws to pull the body down to the rails, the body would really have been tweeked strangely.
is the body sitting in the right place for the dash support? Yes.
normally u see it drawing up near the front, the hinges can bottom out too and draw the front up if touching when closed. I lengthened the hinge slots to get them down a bit.
BTW: The sun treatment only made about a 1mm change...still 5 to go.
When you say you disconnected the struts, did you take them completely off the car? is there anything in the way of the strut hitting like a degas tank or over flow tank next to the frame?
Certainly as previously mentioned send a photo to FFR and follow up with a phone call. I had some minor issues sumilar to yours but not a severe and I shimmed the body fender "up" to match the hood curvature ( of course that was on a MKII) raising one portion of the fender about 1/4".
Bob Mac
Yeah, the struts were completely free, unbolted from the front mounts and dangling freely, straight down toward the ground. No change in the kink.
Back to the sun treatment idea, I talked to one of our PhD chemists at work, and he also suggested that CAREFUL application of heat and force could solve the problem. I'll creep up on it (pun intended), maybe with a flexible heating sheet.
I'll chime back in to this post if I have any success...or not.
That hood looks defective. Did you talk to FFR about it?
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No, I didn't talk to FFR about it. I've got too much time invested in this hood to start over. I cut, then routered the hood so that I could adhesively place the scoop in flush, rather than go with the scoop-on-top look. That procedure went very well, except of course for finding out that FFR's inter-panel adhesive had just barely made it that far in toward the center of the hood. Then there's the mounting and edge trimming time invested. Anyhow, I haven't given up on the thermal flattening possibility, and I'm kinda tired of arguing with FFR about fit issues. I've survived this far, and I'm not willing to give up just yet.
I just set my hood on today and also found a 1/4" hump on the passenger side. It's a Mk4 and this is the first fitting. So far I've done some trimming for fit and working on alignment but no pistons added yet and still have the hump. I've set a small block cylinder head on it to see if would lay down over night. Wait and see now. Looks like a defect at this point.
You would be surprised how much fiberglass can change shape. I had to reshape my hood using a combination of heaters, sun and weight (I moved mine approx 1/4"). I had it sitting perfect then let the hood sit off of the car for a few weeks and it warped into a different shape. The hood seems to want to stay on the car to stay straight.
I'm not too worried about it yet. I remembered this thread and thought I would share a bit. I find this is kind of like working on a fibreglass boat. It's cool out today so I'm wondering if the heat from a couple of work lights would generate enough heat to settle it down.
I'm not too worried about it yet. I remembered this thread and thought I would share a bit. I find this is kind of like working on a fibreglass boat. It's cool out today so I'm wondering if the heat from a couple of work lights would generate enough heat to settle it down.
Gerry
If they are halogen lights, yes they will generate plenty of heat - with the potential to generate too much. It's not a fine line, but there is a line where too much heat is not a good thing with fiberglass. Keep a close eye on it.
If they are halogen lights, yes they will generate plenty of heat - with the potential to generate too much. It's not a fine line, but there is a line where too much heat is not a good thing with fiberglass. Keep a close eye on it.
So I'm thinking as long as I can just keep the surface fairly warm to the touch like on a hot sunny day. I should be ok.
Well, it's interesting to see that another MK4 has the same 1/4" bump on the passenger side. You'd think they'd pay better attention to repetitive errors.
Anyhow, we ran a automated test at work on a scrap piece of FFR fiberglass from my hood scoop cut-out. The test machine measures modulus of elasticity versus temperature, among other things. What this test on the FFR fiberglass showed was that the modulus drops by about a factor of 9 at 300 degrees F. I'll post the test data later.
My eventual plan for the hood straightening is to use an electric sheet heater to bring the hood to 300F in the region of the bump and put weight on it to bring it down to the hood contour. But, first I'll experiment with the piece that I cut out for the scoop.
When you place any weight in the hood be sure to keep it right on the edge where the inner and outer portions are bonded together. If you place it too far inward you will not only re-shape its curvature but you will also create a dip in the hood surface which will then have to be filled with filler to bring back up to shape. Remember the hood surface is only about 1/8" to 3/16" thick and easy to distort. The body's are much thicker than the hood, doors and trunk.
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That is a big gap, we have shimmed the body on the chassis in the past to get the curve right. The reason I say this is the body bolted to the chassis there or not? Looking for ways to solve the problem without replacement. HTH, Richard.
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At the stage I'm at, I was almost thinking of putting a spacer on top of the frame rail to lift the body opening at that spot. My question is; is it better to fasten the body down along the top rails or leave it float? The foam weather stripping has gaps along the top rails of the frame.
You need to place shims between the body and the frame and screw it down. I've read about some not screwing down the body in the hood opening, but most do.
Here's the detail on the DMA (dynamic mechanical analysis) testing of Factory Five's hood fiberglass. What this shows is that the strength of the material drops by about a factory of 9 at about 300 degrees F. Don't go much higher or it may start behaving as thermoset versus a thermoplastic polymer.
Anyhow, I'll be testing these analytical results with a thermal bending test on the material that I cut from the hood for the scoop. With a little luck we'll be able to put some credible procedures out there for others who need to "adjust" their fiberglass.
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#6945
FFR 7124
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