Shelby Billet Hood Pin Install

[RogerS]

For those who are looking to install the billet "Shelby" Hood Pins on a CS6/8 hood I decided to tackle the project this evening. It is NOT as easy as you may think. I am not a master mechanic but I have completed a couple of "nut and bolt" restorations on some early Mustangs. I am aware of many who have installed this kit with the stock aluminum hood with little or no difficulty. With the Fiberglass CS6/8 hood I suggest you borrow or purhase a "Dremel" or similar tool. You will need it.

 

With 2 layers of fiberglass you will need to enlarge both the bottom and top holes drilled from SAI. Seeing as how the kit comes with 2 new mounting brackets and the factory installed brackets and pins had rust forming I decided to change out all of the parts. Here is what I found on the install:

 

1. The hood pins must be set at a higher height due to the top plate thickness

2. The hood is 2 layers both holes drilled from SAI must be enlarged to accomodate movement and adjustment

3. There is very LITTLE room after the pins are insatlled for adjustment. They must be installed "right on"

4. Due to the natural slope of the hood visual checking does not work. It's really opening and closing the hood many times and tweaking until straight.

5. Tools you will need are: drill with bit to drill the pop rivet from the lanyards, 2 pop rivets, pop rivet gun, dremel with a 120 grit sanding band, small screwdriver

and adjustable wrench for the pin nuts, philips head screwdriver.

6. Use a pair of needle nose plyers to hold the bottom the the rivet when drilling, it will spin.

 

With time and patience they look very great.

 

Before

 

 

Original hood pin with plate removed, notice clearance all around

 

 

You need to remove all 7 of these retainier clips before starting located above your grille

 

 

Here is what it looks like underneath the panel, got to detail that

 

 

This is the factory hole for the lanyard after drilling out the rivet

 

 

New lanyard installed, note how the lanyard runs behind the hood pin

 

 

Hood pin, bracket, lanyard and cover installed

 

 

Inner and outer holes after enlarging

 

[ShelbyPilot]

Thanks for the information. I think I'll hold off for awhile.

[srf73]

Ok it wasn't that bad <_<

 

Installed my billet hood pins today. Elapsed time about 1.5 hours.

Here's what I found:

 

The new base plates supplied with the billet kit are different than the SAI OEM base plates. The holes for the new posts are slightly offset from the factory base plate location. So I used the factory base plates. This kept the pins in the right location. No drilling or hogging of the hood holes required.

 

The billet hood discs have a plastic bushing insert. This has an off-center hole in it. If lined up the wrong way the disc won't lay flat on the hood. If lined up the right way there is still a slight problem lining up the disc hood-pin slot with the hole in the post. Solution use a drill or dremel and hog out that plastic bushing to make it symmetrical (elongate but symmetrical wrt center). I "leaned on" the post and base plate mount to bend it ever so slightly tilting forward, but that's really the only adjustment made.

 

As stated above the posts need to stick up slightly higher than the stock posts.

 

That's all it took. The new billet discs screw down using the same 4 factory screw holes. Nice neat, tight installation. Even if some bozo does pop the hood without releasing the hood pins, there's no damage now.

 

YMMV to mine above, but it was pretty easy and looks slick. I was proud of myself, got everythign set up, bolted down and aligned and looked over at my workbench and realized I had not put the radiator plastic cover back on. Had to pull the posts...groan.... :angry: and reset after replacing the cover. Guess it's better than working on your car and finding parts left over tho.

 

Cheers all!

 

Todd

csm1638