Hood Support

[Tumbleweed]

I thought that somewhere, someone made hat channels for the inside of the hood for support. My hood is in good if not great shape but it does flex a little. I thought that the extra brace on the inside would really stiffen the hood up so when the windshield is down it would not put so much pressure on the top. I will not rule out that even though my hood is in good shape the previous owner may have bent it in and then beat the dent back out. If he did he did a great job of hiding the dent!

Thanks,

George

[Ryan_M]

Be careful about how rigid you make the hood. It is supposed to have some amount of flex. The hood on my 3A was beefed up with a couple braces and now it doesn't fit correctly.

The braces are tough to see in this pic but one is a piece of angle iron welded over the original hat channel piece up near the firewall end of the hood. There's another flat-bar brace welded to the hood about where it rests on the grill.



It's so rigid now that there is a sizable gap between it and the fenders. If you are going to add a brace, make sure the hood is in the proper "flexed" position before you do it or you'll end up with this:

[Tumbleweed]

That's good information Ryan and thanks. I was thinking of a brace a little more forward (see your pic below) I think I saw something like this last year but don't remember.

[Birddog7]

I have seen people take the back hat channel off a bad hood and put it in the center. Classic Enterprise carries hat channel that you can adapt and weld in.

[Birddog7]

Here is a example of what Bob3b did to his hood.

[Tumbleweed]

Yep that's what I am talking about. I would like to move it forward just a bit to clear the script. I will check out Classic for some channel.