FC Zach
Active member
I searched for a while before installing, to see how others have installed these but never found much info. . .
So I figured I'd share how I did it, keeping it as simple as possible
To start, I had to find a place to put the pins. This is what delayed me so long, I never could find where others had placed their pins. . I wasn't sure if they had drilled new holes in their radiator support or if they made some type of bracket. After some measurements and eyeballing, I made my decision. . I used two of the holes for the five plastic fasteners along the rad support.
Next was the scary part. . drilling through a perfectly good carbon hood. What I did (which I thought was pretty clever) was simply drill through the hood from underneath with it closed, using the hole in the rad support as a guide. The hole doesn't have to be perfectly center (as you can see in the pic) but as long as its close you'll have a great starting point to use the supplied template.
In the picture above you can barely see a small dot from a permanent marker, center of the pin. This is what I used to align the supplied template.
BAM!! ! Worked great!
Next is to cut a hole slightly larger on the underside of the hood to allow the backing plate to be installed easily. I thought for a while about how I could go about doing this without cutting blindly and that's when I came up with another genius idea I cut lines to each point of the template while it was still attached.
Then prepped the template with double sided tape and cut along the outer line.
Stuck to bottom of hood using the lines I had cut previously.
BAM! Once it's out you'll notice it may not be perfect but it just needs to be close so you can place the backing plate in. You can clean up the edges and even things out with a sanding bit on a Dremel.
After a little sanding.
That's about I can think of, hope my little tips help anyone in the future. Once all the holes are cut and the latches are mounted, you may have to tweak the pins slightly (bending till you get the appropriate angle) so that the latches don't bind when released. Also it will take a while to get your pins to the proper height, with a little patience and a lot of walking back and forth to pop the hood latch, you'll get it perfect!
So I figured I'd share how I did it, keeping it as simple as possible
To start, I had to find a place to put the pins. This is what delayed me so long, I never could find where others had placed their pins. . I wasn't sure if they had drilled new holes in their radiator support or if they made some type of bracket. After some measurements and eyeballing, I made my decision. . I used two of the holes for the five plastic fasteners along the rad support.
Next was the scary part. . drilling through a perfectly good carbon hood. What I did (which I thought was pretty clever) was simply drill through the hood from underneath with it closed, using the hole in the rad support as a guide. The hole doesn't have to be perfectly center (as you can see in the pic) but as long as its close you'll have a great starting point to use the supplied template.
In the picture above you can barely see a small dot from a permanent marker, center of the pin. This is what I used to align the supplied template.
BAM!! ! Worked great!
Next is to cut a hole slightly larger on the underside of the hood to allow the backing plate to be installed easily. I thought for a while about how I could go about doing this without cutting blindly and that's when I came up with another genius idea
I cut lines to each point of the template while it was still attached.
Then prepped the template with double sided tape and cut along the outer line.
Stuck to bottom of hood using the lines I had cut previously.
BAM! Once it's out you'll notice it may not be perfect but it just needs to be close so you can place the backing plate in. You can clean up the edges and even things out with a sanding bit on a Dremel.
After a little sanding.
That's about I can think of, hope my little tips help anyone in the future. Once all the holes are cut and the latches are mounted, you may have to tweak the pins slightly (bending till you get the appropriate angle) so that the latches don't bind when released. Also it will take a while to get your pins to the proper height, with a little patience and a lot of walking back and forth to pop the hood latch, you'll get it perfect!
