just recently got my carbon fiber hood made from VIS and have a noob question. do i need hood pins or am i ok with just the hood latch. i was told by some1 that it was ok. i sometimes drive over 140 mph. but only once in a while.

 

my freind has a vis hood on his civic he has not had any problems but he cant do 140

 

At speeds over 120, your hood should start to flap or lift off if you don't have have hood pins. this applys to both carbon kevlar and aluminum hoods.

 

gives you the security but i don't want to crack the hood while i'm drilling the hood and i don't really trust ne body shop to do it rite. i guess i'll just have to find some1 whose done a lot of those pin installs.

 

One point of advice. The shop that I work at does a number of hood pin installs on CF hoods. Use a left-handed drill bit so the pieces of CF that you are drilling out fall out the bottom and are not pulled up towards the top. This USUALLY keeps the hood from cracking. Hope that helps.

TVA

 

Are you SURE about this????

 

I know this isnt a hood but... I have the Zero Sports carbon wing risers, they needed a hole drilled to fit some wires. I didnt use any different bit, and there was no cracking.

Nick

 

So the bit is turning the correct direction for a right hand bit, and you are just pushing a hole in the material by turning the bit the wrong direction???

 

No, the bit turns in the same direction, the teeth in the bit are the mirror image of a "regular" bit. When drilling, rather than pulling the material that you drill out up, as a regular bit does, a left handed bit will leave the material in or push it more downwards. I'm not the one that actually partakes in this, its just what I've been told by our mechanics who drill on the CF hoods we sell. So, perhaps fiction, maybe fact, its just what I've heard.

TVA

 

Ok...I'm a mechanic...so I know about drills....and I know what a 'left hand' bit is(I have a whole set of them)...so if a left hand bit turns clockwise it is turning opposite the direction it was intended to turn and is not cutting the way it was intended to....
I can see this working...sorta...I'd have to try it to see what happens.....

If you turn a left hand bit anti-clockwise, the way it is intended to turn, the effect is in no way different than a right hand bit turning clockwise and would make no difference whatsoever.

 

Ok, I guess that makes sense, I was just repeating what I had heard in the shop. Perhaps I ought to refrane from doing that quite as much. But if thats the case, why not use a right handed bit, which I assume are more common, and reverse the direction that your drill is turning? Seems like it would take a hell of a lot longer to drill the hole as well. I don't know, anyone else have any definative answers?

TVA

 

MY personall experience with drilling holes in my carbon/kevlar hood is that the only difficult thing about drilling it is that the kevlar sort of fluffs up around the edge of the hole (grin)

I used my dremel with its bit to drill a small pilot hole and then worked my way up with larger normal bits with my non-battery powered Makita drill.

Last I used my dremel's round grinding stone to smooth the edges.

No cracking issues at all but maybe I got lucky? This was on a Fiber Images hood.
:banana: