Hood (part 3)

The hood has come back from the trimmers. There was a roll of Velcro in the pack which wasn’t there before. On closer inspection I noticed that the Velcro was just the hook part (there was no loop Velcro). Also I noticed that the hood fabric that went under the moulding, has been cut off! So a quick call was made to Andy at GD to find out what this was about.

Andy said that the fixing method had changed. He recommended that I applied adhesive to the moulding and let it go off. Then to stick the hook part of the Velcro to the moulding. The loop part of the Velcro is already sewn on to the hood fabric. Andy also sent through some photos of a hood fitted to a factory built car. These showed that in addition to the Velcro, two Tennex fasteners were used at the rear corners of the mouldings to help hold the hood in place. Andy sent through a couple of Tenax fasteners. Another photo showed where the other part of the hood press studs were fitted.

First the mouldings were removed from the car and the position of the Velcro was marked on the upstand of the mouldings and cut to length. The Velcro was positioned so that the very bottom edge of it was in line with the moulding’s lower edge. This makes sure that the piping on the hood fabric is a snug fit to the body. This area was rubbed down again to provide a key for the adhesive and masked off. The exposed part of the moulding upstands were spray painted to tidy them up a little (Andy also trims the ends of these with some leather). Once the paint was dry, the masking tape was removed and the adhesive was applied to the mouldings. When this had gone off, the hook side of the Velcro was applied to each of the mouldings and the moulding re-fitted to the car.

Next I applied some P shaped draught excluder to the underside of the two mouldings. This was to seal any gap and to stop the moulding scratching the car body (not in the GD instructions).

The hood fabric was warmed up on a radiator to make it more flexible to fit.

A bit of heat helps with the fabric fitting.

The centre of the hood fabric was found (mine had a central seam) and this was positioned to align with the centre of the car. The hood fabric was then attached to the car using the Velcro, stretching it to go around the moulding.

Fabric fixed to GRP with Velcro 

The inner flap near the doors do not reach the ends of the GRP - about 30mm short (so 20mm better than it was!). Andy says this is OK and this is why he finishes it off with some leather. So the fabric does not cover all of the GRP (see photos).

Near side flap is short of GRP end 

As above, but for the off-side

Next job, once I have thawed out, is to fix the hood fabric, press studs and the Tenaxfasteners. More on that later.