Air Grabber Hood Kit

azblackhemi

Old Man with a Hat
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Well since I know some of us dabble in A B & E bodies along with our beloved C bodies I thought I'd start this thread showing yesterdays project, converting a regular 70 Road Runner hood into an Air Grabber hood. My customer bought the kit from PG classics. In the end it all worked out al right but in the beginning I had my doubts about the kit. First problem was no instructions, not even a template for cutting the hole in the hood. Luckily for me my buddy had a factory hood laying around that I took measurements off of. The next issue was the horrible spot weld job attaching the top piece that welds into the hood to the bottom piece that holds the under hood plastic cowling. 80 % of the spot welds were broken right out of the box. Where was the quality control on that? The first picture shows the two halves split apart. I wound up drilling and plug welding the pieces back together. Problem solved but an hour of wasted time I shouldn't have had to do. The rest of the job went well. Cut the hole with a die grinder and trimmed with a grinder to get the proper gaps for welding it. A little wider gap is good because a tight gap will raise up after the heat expands the metal making it harder to finish off the seam. Had to really take my time welding as to not get it too hot and warp it. Just little tacks all the way around allowing cooling time after every 10-15 tacks. Finished welding with minimal warping and then careful grinding to not generate too much heat for the same reason. On to the filler work and primer. Here are the pictures.


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nice work on not getting it warped. hard to do on large ,flat panels.
 
Very nice work Chris. I had to repair a rusty '71 Dodge N96 hood and hand fabricated the piece with all the mounting studs before I was aware that it was being reproduced. After seeing the junk you got I'm glad I made my own.
 
Damn - that is gorgeous. Incredible what a MIG welder can do in the right hands.
 
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