Fitting the Hood - Part 2

The next step was to trim the GRP Mouldings down to match the edge of the door opening:

I may yet still need to trim the vertical flange back - depends on how the sidescreen closes. The folding hood frames have a pivot and the bottom which is supposed to be bolted to the GRP Moulding:

The fixing is a single M5 countersunk bolt. I didn't think this would be strong enough to stand up to a few years of abuse so I decided to modify things slightly. I found that the pivot would fit snugly inside a wardrobe rail support bracket:

This was positioned on the GRP moulding and two countersunk holes drilled:This puts the pivot about 4-5mm further back than the position recommended by GD because I allowed a bit of edge distance to the outside hole:The final fitting will have shorter stainless bolts finished off with a dome nut. I will also "butter" the underside of the bracket with sikaflex to help take up any slight surface variations. I think I'll also drill the socket and fit a self tapper just to hold the pivot in place (or possibly araldite it into place as there is no need to remove the pivot form the Moulding) although I doubt it will go anywhere due to the tension in the hood. Now it was time to re-fit the mouldings and fit the hood frames:

As you can see they fold up quite neatly. The reason behind fitting the folding hood is the intention to go touring. This way you can carry the hood folded down on the car giving some precious extra boot space. Plus if it looks like rain you can fit the hood before leaving and it will only take a very short time to fit should it start to rain.

Temptation got the better of me so I draped the hood over the frames and screen to see what it would like:

I think it makes the car look more "vintage".

Hmmmmmm........cosy.

The last job for today was to file and sand the mouldings to get rid of any sharp edges and then prime them ready for painting on the inside. I did think of trimming them but decided it was going to be too awkward.