Seraph

For those of you that have seibon 04' CW-style hoods, you might have noticed that after putting on/taking off the vent plates a few times, that the fiberglass will start to break off and the threads will no longer bite. I was plagued with this problem for a long time as i live in SF and therefore sometimes have really erratic rain/sunshine cycles. Being that i bought the hood mostly for the vents, i didn't want to waste them by leaving the plates on year long, but i also didn't want water to get into the engine bay, so i thought of modding the holes where the plates attatch to the hood.

My idea was that i could take some of these machine screws:



And put them on through the back of the fiberglass under the CF so that the bolt part would stick out, and i can attatch the plates using a nut. I then realized that i will have to bore out the holes in the hood, and also on the plate. I have no exact way to do this except eyeballing with a proper drill bit. After thats done, i realized that difficulty came in getting the bolts behind the fiberglass, as the only point of entry is through the vent area, where the two layers are seperated and have openings. To that end, i decided to use a wire to wrap the bolt in:



Note: Be sure to make the wrapping really tight, because if that bolt falls between the two layers, you'll have a helluva time trying to get it out.

This allowed me to kinda work it into the opening and get it positioned where i want it. Note that you might have to kinda pre-bend the wire so that it actually gets to where you need it to be, as sticking it in straight won't work since there are bends all over the place. Once you get it in place, put the nut on the thread and then hold the threads with pliers, then pull hard on the wire until it unravels.

This is what it looks like with the bolt in:



After you get it in there, you need something to hold the bolt in place. I was going to go with epoxy, but i realized after test-fitting the first bolt that the epoxy would cure before you even get the thing in (this project took a few hours of working the screws. So i used some of this stuff:



Its called magnum steel, and its kinda like epoxy in putty form, you need to cut out a slice of the two parts, and then kneed them. Afterwards you have about 5 minutes to get the job done, but before it hardens it can be molded. On the left side of the hood i decided to put some on the head of the bolt and some on the threads so that there'll be magsteel on both sides of the fiberglass. I found that it didn't really make a huge difference, so if you wanna go that extra mile, go ahead it won't hurt it, but i didn't do it for the right side, and it is still fine. You need about his much for each bolt:



Then you need to roll it in your hand and then wrap it around the bolt. The way that i made sure that the magsteel would be as tight as it can be, with the head of the bolt all the way up against the back of the fiberglass, was to put the nut on the thread, and then using pliers, pull the whole thing back while i applied the magsteel:



This is what it'll look like with the magsteel applied:



And with the nut applied:



You can see that it forms a hill near the base of the threads. If you're worried that it'll keep the plate from being flush, you can go ahead and sand some of it off. Just make sure that you don't do too much or the bolt might come loose.

This is what it'll look like after it cures and you put the plate on:





If you want even more water-tightness, get some black silicone, and apply it in a bead around the plate itself, wait to cure so that it forms a water barrier, then put it back on the hood and see if all the seams are sealed.

Cheers!

Choku Dori

iTrader: (2)

Holy ****, Rockin DIY King!

Seraph

haha, more like "omg i'm too poor to get this professionally done so imma bust a hack job"

my2003wrx

iTrader: (3)

Yeah I can tell it was a hack job, LOL J/K



Nice job man.



:banana: