Costly Mistake

[kenewagner]

I got up early on Sat morning, 5 AM to work on the SC. It had been running rough so I swapped in a set of new plugs. Also installed some shorter end leaks on the rear stabilizer bar. I decided everything was going so well I guess Ill take it out and run it. The following picture shows what happens when you have no hood latch and forget to install the hood pins. Window will be replaced tomorrow for 175.00 and the hood will need some minor repair. My next project will be installing some kind of safety latch to prevent this in the future.

[007_SuperCoupe]

Ken,
That sucks! Hope you get a safety something worked out! Can't wait to see it in person...You've done a lot of work to it. Too bad you've got to spend a some more to fix it now. Let me know how it turns out.

[BikerSC]

That's pretty scary huh?

That sucks man. Good luck.

-Steve

[J57ltr]

Is that 175 installed? I paid $40 for mine and it was $80 installed. Most of the shops around here were only a little over $100 installed. It was generic glass (not PPG).

Jeff

[Bill McNeil]

I'm sorry to see that happen to anyone!

I parked in the middle of 2 parking spaces yesterday while I stopped to buy a Mother's Day card at the mall, and when I pulled out I forgot how closely I'd parked to the parking median on the passenger side. I basically jumped the curb pulling out and almost pulled the skirt off that whole side. Luckily, it only scraped the bottom of the skirt where you can't see.

Moral of the story for both of us = being cool costs. :p ;)

[Melon]

Ouch.. How much damage did it do to the hood? How fast where you going when it flipped over?

I'm planning to get hood pins for my hood (sometime soon I hope) but am keeping my emergency latch for this very reason.

-Andy "Melon"

[kenewagner]

I took the car down a road next to the airport, did a U turn and than stood on it to see how the engine would run. Got to about 35 or 40 When bam the hood stood straight up and the window exploded :eek: , or so it seemed at the time. I got another estimate for 140.00 installed. The hood has the rear corners turned up slightly and one strut pulled the pin clear out of the hood. Had to get out and push the hood down and idle back to the shop. I was hopeing at the time no one saw how cool I looked with my hood straight up in the air :rolleyes:

[XR7 Dave]

Oh, do I feel your pain. Mine was worse because the grill let go of the hood on the XR7 and it smacked the roof so hard we had to replace the roof not to mention it folded the hood over backwards and broke the dashboard. I was going about 50-60 at the time. :(

[Brandon]

Is that 175 installed? I paid $40 for mine and it was $80 installed. Most of the shops around here were only a little over $100 installed. It was generic glass (not PPG).

Jeff


That generic glass explains why you paid so little. You get what you pay for....use the good glass!

[DamonSlowpokeBaumann]

I paid 150 (cost) for my windsheild last year..And you got off lucky...No roof damage..

My freind did this three times with his race stang.. three windsheilds...Three fixed hoods...Three bent cowls..and two dented in roofs...He finally learned his lesson

So as bad as it seems..SOmeones done worse;O)

[J57ltr]

That generic glass explains why you paid so little. You get what you pay for....use the good glass!


While the PPG glass may be better I found out a long time ago that rocks don't care what kind of glass you have, you still get chips and cracks. It really dipends where you live. If you live in the middle of Houston then you are going to see that replacing windsheilds happens every few years.




A few years ago I installed an adjustable thermostat on the El Camino and was testing the on temp in a parking lot (at night) and waited for the fan to turn on. When it turned on I said "Cool, that's where I want it" then hopped in the car and left (without latching the hood). I was on a feeder road and was doing about 30-35 mph and I saw the hood bobble up and down, then I slammed on the brakes, about a half second too late. The hood came up and dropped back down to the point that I couldn't see under it and I had to stick my head out the window. I pulled into another parking lot and got out. I couldn't get the hood all the way up because the hinges were flipped backwards. I finally got one flipped around (using a scissor jack and a pair of wire cutters) and was able to latch the front of the hood. I ended up driving it to our shop and using the overhead crane to lift the hood so I could fix the other side. Luckily I didn't really damage anything.

oops!

Jeff

[kenewagner]

I do feel fortunate that the damage was minor. I was surprise how many other people popped their hoods. Puts me in good company from what I see from the responses. Thanks for all the replys

[ThunderDave]

Hey Ken, at least you didn't mess up those new rims :eek:
You have done a lot to it lately and you probably neeed new glass anyway.

I've never had this happen, although when I was younger, i had a Maverick with a 302 and my neighbor had bought a Camaro with a snorkel hood scoop. We took the scoop off his car and duct taped it to the hood of mine. Got up to about to about 50 before it let go and went flying over the roof. It missed the windshield. I guess they didn't make high speed duct tape back then.

David

[kenewagner]

Had new glass put in and it does look real nice. But the hood cracked the top of the dash. It is not real noticable but Im afraid it will get worse with time. My goal has still been to get it ready for a nice paint job so I am glad I did this before a new paint job and not after