Celica Forums General Discussion Exterior Carbon Fiber hood help

i just got a new Carbon Fiber hood, i installed it and had some issues. 1st, the bolts where very hard to screw in..i was afraid i was going to strip them out but they went in eventually.2nd,when closed the hood sticks up about 1 inch on the left side, im going to install hood pins and hopefully this will pull it down.3rd,the hood is out of adjustment and because of the way the screws fit im not sure how i can aline it.

if you have a Carbon Fiber hood please let me know if you've had similar experiences and how did you fix them? thanx

Most likely if you have a Carbon Fiber hood you tend to run into this problem. I went through 3 hoods a 1 piece hood, 2 piece hood by importtrends and 2 piece raised hood by V.I.S. none seemed to fit just perfect without some type of modification.

Here are some hints:

01. Inspect the clearance underneath your hood. Sometimes the support brackets that form the hood are made up of thick fiberglass check it out see if anything is hitting.

02. If you find scratches in a particular area under your Carbon Fiber hood most likely it's just a clearance issue.

03. This problem usually happens on GT's but some 2000 Celica GT have seem to pull it off where the design structure underneath the hood is not hitting or disturbing the throttle clamp when the hood is closed. Manufactuers all go by one mold but sometimes after making many molds form is not perfect in depth or structure it varies in different ways.

04. After running into this problem trying to find the perfect hood. Here's what I ran into. The reason why GT's get it the worst is because the throttle cable clamp that holds you're throttle cable up in the center of you're intake manifold is hitting one of the support bar structures under your hood (Well atleast mine did).It goes the same fore the GTS. But most of the time GTS do not tend to have this little gap problem to the left side due to the fact that this throttle clamp is lower then compared with the GT. The worst you may have to do is cut underneath the hood with a dremel work slow and be gentle as you don't want the hood to get screwed up.

05. You may also need to put in the rubber bumpstops that close your hood for proper alignment many Carbon Fiber hoods don't have pre-drilled holes for these which cause the hood to be unbalanced when bolted on and closed. These rubber bumpstops can be adjusted in height so you'll be able to adjust the gapage on both left and right sides.

06. Last if none of this works and your pins don't do the justice keep in mind not every Carbon Fiber hood is as perfect as an O.E.M. hood. It may be a defect in the way the hood was made. Some people get just get that lucky hood! I had to go through 3 until I figured out what was going wrong as well as clamps molded in, bolted in that aren't safe and do not shut down all the way properly!

Hope you get the problem fixed! After my experiences with these hoods I ended up using sparco pins, and locking pins but now I've gotten it to where I don't need it heh. I finally got it perfected though.

If you have a GT check #4 good luck no stress!

Oh almost forgot one more thing I did experience that tightness with bolting them on with the stock bolts make sure you use the ones that are supplied with the hood if they were supplied.

Some others checks as well to see if anything is hitting your structure support bars underneath you hood. If you have anything modified such as under the hood here are some quick fix you may need cut some of the upper area in the hood with a dremel:

Strut bar
Battery tie downs
New larger battery
Oil Caps
And the infamous GT Throttle Cable Clamp - Bend down a little or cut around this area.

If you want to see what is really going on underneath compare the bottom of the hood with your stock and see where the differences are before puting it on the vehicle! Their's a couple more I can't think of right now. Got to go to bed later!

cool, thanx for the info.i have a gts, but i will check for clearance tonight.

post a pic man and good luck!

yes please post pics when its done .

pics will be posted

or else ... na na j/k