Carbon fiber hood doesn't fit

I only personally know of one person with a carbon fiber hood. It is 100% real carbon fiber and the fit is terrible. He likes it because it is a weight freak (as in, it is AMAZING what extremes he's gone to to shed weight from his car).

So based on a sample size of one, there are other poorly fitting hoods out there. That doesn't mean that all of them are but someone will have to speak up with first-hand experience demonstrating it.

Thanks Charlie.

Anyone else had experience with this?

Upon thinking about this further, am I going to be jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire if I buy a used stock hood that doesn't fit well either? These cars are loaded with anomalies.

Corey,

I gave much thought to this when I was working with mine. I came to the conclusion not to use Carbon Fiber because of fitment issues. If I were to use carbon fiber I would want the carbon fiber to be the finish. I just didn't see how that was possible.

So I chose fiberglass from PIM. It is a very well build hood but as expected it did not fit well. I don't blame the manufacturers for 2 reasons. First compost parts are very hard to get consistent shapes; especially when you look at panel gaps, shrinkage and such. Second there is a lot of variance car to car. This is especially true if you are shooting for quality panel gaps.

SO...fitment is just part of it. It is as said why I chose fiberglass over carbon fiber.

This hood is quite light and very well built. If you already have a carbon fiber hood you could fit it and use it the same way I did this. If you wanted to leave the carbon fiber look maybe you could leave some carbon fiber stripes like racing stripes down the center and finish/paint the rest.

Anyway, here was the work I put in to mine to get it to properly fit:

http://www.rc-tech.net/pantera1/decklid/dl.htm

My carbon fiber experience ... I order a hood it fit very poorly .. i sent it backa nd they sent me a fiberglass good 1/4 larger all around so i sanded it to fit and sent it back to them and they made me a CF hood that fits perfect .. it was a custom CF manufactuer who had the mold for a pantera i guess ... the rear deck lid ..now thats a another story .. i ran out of time and patience and it fits the same as COMP2's ... like S$%# ... so i had to make hinges and bond them on and i still have to add fiberglass to fit it ... so i guess in both cases I will have to spray them black and lose the CF look ? But i saved the wieght for sure ...

Ron

Ron,

Your experience sounds familiar. The hood I have is about 1/8" too small all around.

not everyone with a Pantera is Rich. The Hood Better fit. Thats what you pay for at that price. Surely they tried the Hoods on there cars for fit. I hope. I always wanted one in carbon or fiberglass. No Excuse for a bad fir. If I order it, I will give them my exact measurements of my hood and deck. If I have to return it at my expense, that would Tick me off.

Carbon fiber is good if it has enough section depth to stiffen it.
Even fiberglass well reinforced lends to bow with age and being exposed to hot sun accelerates the transition.
The front "boot" cover on a Pantera is not an item that you want to make out of carbon fiber. The best material for it is steel and even there you can see the transparency where the skin has been rolled over the spider and if you aren't careful with it, you will rabbit ear the corners.
The only quality way to make those panels is to make the spider support thick and heavy, which kind of negates the entire reasoning to begin with in my opinion.
The support spiders on the Pantera deck lids are very shallow and probably has a lot to do with why the aluminum skins where mounted over the steel spiders rather then stamp the spiders out of aluminum too.
I can see those panels not lasting over race conditions at all.
Probably the thing to do is have the doors, decklids, etc made out of titanium sheet.
Private and industrial use of titanium has become less restricted and the material more affordable and available since the dark ages of the late 60s and early 70s.
Its use was restricted due to national security back then.
Wouldn't want no Ruskies buying up race Panteras to make Mig29s out of now would you?