Update on VFN hood install...

Deep6

Registered User
Hello all,

I figured I'd update everyone on my 96-97 Stock Bolt on VFN Hood install.

Officially the hood is on and is being held in place with a Bungee cord. Not good. The shop that I took it to felt that by allowing the latch to click into the fiberglass striker plate of the hood was not adequate and that it was a liability to the shop. Great. :(

In addition to this, they did not install the hood liner like I had asked. I'm afraid that the heat generated by the Supercharger could eventually cook the paint on the hood. Instead they left the hood liner in the back seat. Thanks guys. :(

There are no hood struts either, but I'll see what I can do about that.

Another problem that the hood has is that it seems to be manufactured with too much material toward the rear of the hood. The end result is that it isn't even sitting nearly close to being flush with the front quarter panels. I'm thinking that a combination of shaving the inner edges down and filing/elongating the bolt holes should solve the problem. I havne't really gotten a good look at it yet.

I've installed a new header panel with 96-97 headlights, I noticed that when I was driving the car back overnight that when I went over some bumps the lights were shaking a little bit up and down. Not much but just enough to be annoying. I remember installing everything tight... what could cause this?

I'd like to fix some of these niggling problems first before I take pix. It just doesn't look right at the moment. I called VFN for some advice and after all is said and done with this I'll request that they include more hardware with this kit to make it truly "Bolt-on".

The silver lining to the cloud is that the painting looks great. I'm pretty surprised that they didn't have to go through any excessive paint matching and whatnot, which tells me that my original 10 year old paint is still in good shape.
 
PICTURES!!!!

I;d say just install liner yourself. A good heat ref;ective liner with adhesive would work fine. You could use hood pins if not happy with the lathcing mechanism

Ask what others have done

Damon
 
Shaking headlights... the Header panel isn't bolted tight to the chassis and is flexing somewhere. Either that or your clips holding the headlights to the header panel itself isn't tight.

Or then I suppose the hood could be hitting the lamps since it's not all tight.
 
Good Ideas... All of them...

I hadn't considered the hood tapping the headlights, As a possibility. I'll be sure to tighten the screws to the headerpanel, but maybe it's made of plastic that is infernior and flexes too much?

I made sure to seat the headlights in the header panel myself. It was a pain, I had to turn the plastic tab/screws until they locked in place. So I made sure that they all locked in place.

Also, perhaps there isn't enough clearance from the bumper to the headlights. I saw that the bumper is touching the corner of the headlight and that might be a problem.

I don't know when I can get some pics up (gotta get batteries for the digital camera) but it's been a really bad weekend. It was raining here non-stop for like 3 days and even today was heavily overcast. When the weather clears up, I'd like to get busy with this more....
 
Back
Top