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Aftermarket Hood

Ok...so I “was” ready to get it off to paint (or at least get it on the waiting list) but after talking with the paint & bodyman I decided to try and tweak a few things to save him some time and ultimately save me some money....or so I thought.

First, I tried reworking the aft edge of the original hood a bit and then it went sideways (overworked the metal a bit) and I then thought I would try an aftermarket hood instead thinking that it couldn't be that bad. Big mistake. Big, big mistake. But I was committed after spending the $900 so here goes the documentation of the past several weeks of turmoil.

When I placed the aftermarket hood on the truck it was obvious that the curvature of the hood didn't match the curvature of the cowl. Both sides stuck out considerably from the cowl. The mating portion of the cowl is also aftermarket so it is not clear which part is the offending party but after some head and butt scratching I came up with a plan to fix it.

I initially considered trying to simply bend the inner hood support to better match the cowl contour but there really wasn't a good way to control the bending and force it to bend in the correct location nor a good way to predict the proper spring-back when it was bent. I was also afraid that the hood skin might warp awkwardly since the bending needed to happen a bit diagonal to the inner support due to the fact that the hood curvature is tapered front to back and not normal to the support that needed bent.

After I marked with tape the area where I wanted to re-contour the hood with it in place, I then removed the hood and made some relief cuts in the hood support. I made 3 cuts on one side and 4 cuts on the other since one side needed a bit more re-forming than the other. Once the support was cut I placed the hood back on the truck. I removed both front fenders so I could easily see and access the underside to check the fitment.

Once I confirmed the cuts would allow the hood to conform to the cowl, I removed the hood and temp welded a few pieces of flat-stock on each side of the cuts so I could form the hood to the cowl and clamp another piece of flat-stock across the cuts to hold the contour while I removed the hood and welded the cuts up. I did this for both sides and it worked out pretty well. I then ground down the welds to clean it up a bit.