FLOPPER STOPPER

The rearmost bottom corners of a Sonett III hood assembly is normally held in place with a bolt. The tilt hood on the Electric Norseman makes that sort of fix just a tad unhandy. My fix is a set of inclined pins--one on each side of the car--welded to the square steel inner hood reinforcement. Each pin--as the hood is lowered and latched at the back, slips over a horizontal pin bolted to the frame. When the hood is latched down, the lower corners of the hood just snug up to the frame of the car, so it all lines up and doesn't flop around.

I got in a bitch of a position to take this under-fender photo, but you can clearly see the inclined pin. As the hood goes DOWN, the pin draws the hood IN, against the frame of the car. I made the bracket--that is bolted to the frame--adjustable, so it is entirely possible to get it "just right".


Two drawings in one....the main drawing shows the tilt hood partly open. No. 2 [in both drawings] is the square steel reinforcement frame inside the 'glass hood skin. You can see where the inclined pin is welded to that frame, and how, when the hood is closed, the pin slides right over the second pin on the strap bolted to the frame of the car.

In the smaller drawing on the right, No. 1 is the fiberglass skin of the car, No. 2 is the square steel reinforcing frame, and No. 3 shows how the fiberglass hood skin is sucked right in against the frame of the car. Thus "gestopping der flopping." Simple fixes are almost always the best.