Hood Fitting

[Jon Green]

Hi,

 

Fitting the hood is my next task. Unfortunately my garage is as well insulated as a field, so getting it warmed up before hand is out of my budget. I was wondering if I fitted the hood without the frame in place and then fitted the frame later, would i end up with a nice tort roof? Any thoughts please!

 

Im also unsure of how the mounting brackets that support the frame fix to the car and where to drill the tubes.

 

Cheers,

 

Jon

[steve in stockport]

not that i've got any weather gear but as its made of vinyl it would seem best to get it as warm as possible when fitting.

if you fit it cold you will get the hood expanding when it warms up leaving gaps or loose material between fixings.

have you got an airing cupboard with a hot water tank that you can wrap the hood round for a bit to get it good and warm and an electric fan heater to use in your garage?

 

Steve

[Andy Spencer]

If you go onto the main RHOCAR page you can download the hood fitting instructions, they are tatty but at the bottom, I drew a diagram of how to drill the holes in the frame and how to assemble it. Its a scanned pdf file.

I did this because I bu****ed it up myself!!

 

I fitted my hood in the winter, if you get them too warm and stretch them too much, you can't get them up when they are cold without nearly tearing them or pulling them off the poppers. The airing cupboard seems a good idea, or if you can warm the garage up to the point where the vinyl is nice and flexible, don't stretch it too much.

 

Mine fits really nicely and I fixed it on a mild winter day, with the hood having been in the house for an hour or so.

 

Good luck

 

Andy

[Jon Green]

So there's no advantage to fitting the roof without the hood frame first?

 

tar,

 

Jon

[Guest ant.b]

hi jon

i fitted mine without the hood frame first ,then added that after , and it is nice and tight once the frame is up, i only used the front frame so if your using both then you may have to leave it a bit looser to allow for the rear part of the frame

ant

[Jon Green]

Hi,

 

Can anyone post a photograph of how they fixed the L bracket to the car (2b). I've just offered it up and the end of the longest hood frame sails past the flat boot area to a couple of inches forward of the roll bar! Do they need shortening?

 

Cheers,

 

Jon

[Guest Andy Hamilton]

Where is this hood fitting document? I can't seem to find it.

[Guest salty_monk]

Mine was fitted with no extra bars at all... Was fine but less headroom if you're tall.

 

It also made the fit between the roof & the sidescreens a little odd so gap appeared at the back, no big deal though, you caould make sidescreens easily enough to fit the hole...

 

Dan

[Guest chris brown]

Mine is forward of the boot and I did use it with a full hood and both tubes but now only use the surrey so only one tube

 

(note must change those brackets for stainless ones)

[gomatthome]

i picked a hot day to do mine but when it came down to it it is easier if you test fit with frame in place mark out and then put frame down. Fix poppers (not all) slide frame back up which does add additional tension.

 

One thing to watch out for however is that if you fix as per brief glimpse on vidoe then the hood ends up in the incorrect position and you wont get doors to fit. The top of the hood basically needs to be in line with the top of the screen and the roll bar ie on my car the hood frame just goes over the roll bar.

 

With regard to the supports right or wrong i just put them as far back as they would go and bolted to the chasis. Will try to add photos.

 

phil