carbon fiber hood

[Keeper of The Kitten]

Phenolic - excellent! Surprising at the price though?

As for depressurizing gas struts being dangerous - we did that at work for the Bentley race car doors, don't think it required disassembly?!! Any job is dangerous if you do it wrong...

Of course, the struts we had may have been designed to be adjustable!!

__MDC__

[BRY]

So that's one person and myself of the five required then?
Any more?

[elijahallens2]

Another thing to remember with these hoods is if you plan on ever going more than 120mph you should have hood pins. These carbon fiber hoods have been known to let go at high speeds and that would really suck .

Elijah

[juiced]

Too true, it does happen.
The man here from Carbon Technik makes Porsche bonnets from full carbon and epoxy resin all bagged too, they have been used on track cars with no failures from what I've been told, and some of the street ones reach mental speeds. And a quarter the weight of the steel one. Mind you they cost over $2000NZ or about 750 pounds I think. So you do get what you pay for!

[Keeper of The Kitten]

Hmmm - that would be a damning indictment of standard mountings!

Bonnet pins are a bit crappy but a definite mechanical fixing.

The usual thing to use on race cars now is Protex over-centre catches, but they require a pocket recessed into the panel and a smaller pocket on the mating panel for the fastener to lock into. Better suited to vehicles with a full set of composite bodywork.

Think I might ask a few of the other engineers at work what they think.

__MDC__

[Keeper of The Kitten]

BTW Bentley Speed 8 doors held shut with miniaturised Polo latches!!

__MDC__

[Fat Audi 80]

Some Gas Struts have a small adjuster screw allowing you to bleed the pressure off to the level you require.

I don't think the S2 ones do though.....