Contour Enthusiasts Group Archives Forums Branches California Deal for Nor-Cal CEG's

Okay,

One of my friends owns a body shop, and he has several customer cars at his shop, some of which have been featured in magazines, and most of the cars that have composite body parts (mainly hoods) have hoodpins, and the cars that didn't have had the hoods fly up at even just freeway speeds. On his personal cars, if it sports a composite hood or trunklid/hatch, he runs sometype of securing device (pins and external latches) on top of the "factory" style latches. I personally cannot stand watching my hood shaking and fluttering at highway speeds.

Another friend of mine owns a CF products company, and he said it is necessary to run pins on any composite hood.

Keep in mind, all of these CF hoods may have factory style latches, but the subframes that these CF hoods are bonded to(key word is "bonded") is fiberglass. Some are hand-layed, mine hoods subframe is chopper-gun glass. But the fiberglass is somewhat slightly weaker than CF, and it's my belief that the latches are bonded to the subframes, and fiberglass will fatigue faster than CF (obviously). So, it's not a matter of if, it's more of a matter of when the hood will fly up if you're not using pins.