C-One Replica Hood. Lets Fix this sucker!

[TinyGiant]

Okay some of you have seen the hoods that microimage had that came in with poor fitment. I finagled my way into trading him for one.. After Trying it on the car I saw potential for sure.

Observations:
-The Drivers side was nice and tight to the body and contoured nice with the headlight. Above the headlight the side was a little tight.. so i have to trim that down a little.
-Passenger side was about 1/4 if not more off. its like the trimmed the hood or set it up like 1/4in toward the drivers side.
-The hood had a little bit of a bow to it .. when you clamp down the middle (in the cowl) of the hood to the inside of the hood it removed the bow.
- The front sits a tiny bit too high


So... Here was my thought. BONDO! rather than laying down fiberglass and dealing with that i figured bondo sets fast and sands easily.


I'll get some pics later on.

I used Bondo-glass .. its a bondo with some short fiber in it.

a while back when fixing some rust on an old camry my parents had a mechanic taught me a slick trick with bondo to get off to a good start.. WAX PAPER! Start out mixing the bondo according to the directions and be ready to work fast because it sets fast. I would reccomend doing a little at a time so that you dont end up a with a pile of hard bondo that you cant use.

Put a little bit of bondo on the top and bottom edge of the hood.

Then cut a piece of wax paper and apply it to the bottom enough hanging out that you can fold it over the top.

Put an appropriate amount of bondo on the waxpaper by the edge. you might do a little more than you need so you can have an easier time shaping after.

Fold the wax paper up and over and squish it a little so that you can smooth it out and make it the thickness you need. dont worry about how wide your edge is because we want something to be able to trim down.


keep doing this until you get a good 1" more of an edge.

after is hardened you can peel off the wax paper and you should have somewhat of a smooth surface to work with.. more harder will make it set faster so if you put a little more in it will set faster so you can wax paper it and hold it in place so you get the right curve on it .. its pretty hard in 3-5min or so.


At first i used a sanding block and some sandpaper but found this to be taking way too long since i made it quite thick in a couple spots So i decided to graduate up to a palm sander. This saved alot of effort but still took a good amount of time.

Sand that sucker and shape it .. its going to take a long time. I actually used a paint scraper to shape it to start to get the high spots down.

after a while of sculpting and sanding you should have a nice smooth surface with more of an edge.


Removing the Bow:

Clamp the hood in the middle

Sand a little around the middle and wipe it down

Bondo the top and bottom making sure to get some bondo in between the top and the bottom and make sure that it petrudes over the gap so that it will set and secure it.

Let it sit 30-40min to make sure its really set.

Remove the Clamp.. and viola! no more bow!

Sand the sucker to make it smoothed out .. just make sure not to sand too much that you lose the bridge between the gap that you made to bond the two parts together.



Fitment/sculpting edge: (i'll do this tomorrow when i do this step)