In the coming weeks I’ll be posting a series of articles on how automotive hoods are designed and manufactured. A hood can offer various performance gains, a performance hood can offer weight savings over stock, by doing so it can improve weight distribution, fuel economy, acceleration and top speed… design elements like air induction or “Ram Air” as most call it can improve engine performance. A hood can offer the required clearance for mechanical upgrades such as superchargers, they can also extract heat to keep engine temperature down. It can even depressurize the engine compartment and improve acceleration and top speed…. So basically it all depends what the designer is looking for… The purpose of the series is to explain how different hoods are made and mostly what to expect when making a purchase.
I’ll be writing a series of articles to cover the following;
Article 1
Hood Basics
1. Safety in design
a. Internal hardware
b. Assembly
c. Manufacturing quality
2. Durability
3. Painting various panels
4. Installation and fit
Article 2
Composite Hood Manufacturing
1. High volume SMC Composite, (Sheet Molding Compound)
2. Fiberglass based composite hoods
a. Hand Laminated (Chopper)
b. Hand Laminated (Mat)
c. RTM light (Resin Transfer Molding)
d. ACS RTM heavy tooling