Underhood Refinish!

T0RCH3D

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Well after buying the car in late June and looking at this every time I opened the hood I figured I should finally do something about it and man was it an experience. The results were well worth it in the end! Before:

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Anyways, going into the project I did some research of my own and then sought after advice from 04sleeper and 5spd07gt. They offered great advice to motivate me to do the project.

Recommended Materials:
-(2 Cans) 12oz Aerosol of Ford D3
-2oz Spray Bottle of Prep Solvent Wax and Grease Remover
-1 3M Tack Cloth
Automotivetouchup.com Touch Up Paint, Aerosol Spray Paint and Touchup Paint Accessories | AutomotiveTouchup | 888-710-5192
-(2 Cans) SprayMax 2K Urethane Aerosol Clear Coat
SprayMax 2K Urethane Aerosol Clear Coat
-3M Automotive Grade Wet Sand Paper(800,1000,1500,2000)
-3M Sanding Block
-3M Automotive Tape (green)
Local Walmart or hardware/auto stores.


Removed hood and masked the surface. Then wet sanded the hood with 800 grit and worked my way up to 1200 then 1500.
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Then I sprayed a light base tack coat and three additional wet coats of paint allowing 20 minutes of flash time between coats.
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After 30 minutes after the final coat I proceeded to clear coat. One tack coat and 3 follow coats. (I had to buy more clear because I originally did not spray wet enough coats and the fiberglass absorbed most of the clear and here were the results. Not so good.
DSC07584.jpg


After sanding the clear with 1000 and working my way thru the grits I then sprayed another 3 coats. This time I sprayed thicker coats allowing longer flashing, prepping between coats and used SprayMax 2K clear coat (best aerosol clear IMO) and the results were awesome!
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While re-installing my hood I ran into a big time problem. One of the hood studs snapped clean off.
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brokenthreadclose.jpg


I found the stud is part of the hood and are attached to a steel plate riveted to the fiberglass hood. I started to look for a thread sleeve or an in and out nut but had no luck. Then I looked online and found no solution to this problem. A guy I know who owns a machine shops said to cut the fiberglass on the side and pop on a new stud and re-fiber the hood, no thanks! My body shop says in this case buy a new hood, no thanks! Contacted ford, no parts!

Waiting a week for the nut coupler to arrive at Fastenal. NO ONE carries metric, go figure.
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This quickly turned out to be little bit of a tricky fix with some improvising along the way. So I then proceeded to my second plan and bought a 6M:1 nut coupling and then grinded the hex edges down. Then I channeled the fiberglass so the nut can sink below the fiber surface to the threads below. After I shortened the nut coupler with a cutting wheel I attached a new stud and then had to add two washers as spacers because of the coupling and the hinge. I plan on adding a washer on the other 3 studs so they are all identical and painting the nuts and exposed thread.

After what turned out to be one hell of a project but here are the end results! Figured I would share, comments are welcome! :beer:

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5spd07gt

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Looks good man. Glad to see you finally got it done. Way to be persistent.
 

JustaGT

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Looks great. I have been wanting to do mine since I saw 04Sleeper do this but haven't ever gotten around to it.
 

CobraBob

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wow, great job. especially with the broken stud.

Ditto! Great job with improvising a solution when nobody seemed to have an easy one that would work. A lot of time went into the hood but the end result was well worth it. :beer: :rockon:
 

Maverick-4

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Looks great! congrats! let see a close up pic of the broken nut fix, sounds like It could come useful to anyone running into a similar problem..
 

T0RCH3D

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Thanks everyone for the comments. As for the broken hood stud, I didn't document the progress on that but would be willing to elaborate/walk thru step by step for anyone who comes across this problem. Seemed there was no real solution to this on any forum and Ford themselves did not provide an answer.
 

T0RCH3D

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The 99-04 hoods are not technically fiberglass as I referred to in the OP, but made a similar material. They're made from another composite, known as "SMC." It stands for "sheet molding compound." It's a primarily glass fiber in polyester resin matrix. The polyester matrix is more resilient than the typical plastic/styrene based matrix with your average run of the mill fiberglass. Sorry I didn't clarify this, I figured this out as well through my experience!
 

brian97cobra

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so did u actually paint the underside of the hood or did you clean the hell out of it and then clean it a bunch of times?

i read what you stated but body lingo is not my best. "light base tack coat" im assuming is paint? would love more info as my underhood is black but not all of it is painted and cleared.

thanks
 

T0RCH3D

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Yes the hood was painted. After sanding and pre-paint prep, I sprayed a tack coat as a base for the next layers of paint to adhere too. Being that the hood material is more porous it can take more coats which is why this was done. In most cases a quality primer would be used but in this case it wasn't necessary as most of the hood was coated prior to the project. Hope this cleared up your initial question, if you decide to tackle this yourself feel free to post here or PM me with your questions.
 

va boy

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Solid work , great end result. It's little things like this that really seperate one car from the next.
I know what my next winter mod will be!
 

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