What Did You Do To Your Car Today?

maillemaker

Active Member
Joined
Mar 5, 2023
Messages
419
Reaction score
216
Today I went to my first Mustang club drive-in at the local Sonic!

Before I went, I put my door panel back on.

My upper door panel was separating from the lower - some of the heat-staked posts had broken off. In addition, one of the plastic hooks had broken.

I used Vicrez bumper repair epoxy to glue the posts back in place. This is an epoxy that rapidly cures but cures flexible and tough. It appears to have worked bonding the two pieces together.


IMG_7640.JPG

I had previously repaired one of the door hooks by using Gorilla Glue and bonding two pieces of threaded rod into the grooves. Wish I had waited for the Vicrez epoxy I think it would have made a better repair.

IMG_7641.JPG
 

joemomma

Well-Known Member
Joined
Dec 9, 2020
Messages
1,225
Reaction score
733
Got the Aerocatch locking hood latches installed on Saturday. Man, what a relief! I was nervous as a cat in a room full of rocking chairs making those cuts. It ended up taking longer to adjust fitment than it did to make the cuts and install them. I should have taken more pictures.
Here's the finished product:
IIQQESp.jpg

I started Friday night by installing the actual pins. I just removed the factory rubber stops and used those holes. They actually lined up really well with the aftermarket hood. The Aerocatch included some washers, but the hole for the factory stops was rectangular and almost bigger than the washers, so I grabbed some fender washers I had laying around and used those in conjunction with the included ones. Once those were in roughly (after a run to the hardware store for extra nuts, since I lost one in the front end somewhere) I taped up the top side of the hood with painters tape to protect the paint. I used a 1/2" drill bit for the pin hole, drilling from the bottom up. I had initially thought about using a jigsaw, but realized that wouldn't work because the hood was two "layers". So I ended up using a cutoff wheel on the Dremel to make the cuts. I traced out the inside of the latch and proceeded to make the cuts without issue.

The next part, and this is kind of where it got tricky - was how to do the bottom part of the latch. Most of the videos I saw people mounted the bottom part of the latch underneath the hood. That wouldn't work for me with the included hardware since the hood was so thick. So, we decided that we'd just mount the bottom part of the latch between the layers. After some test fitting, we tried to tape the bottom part to the underside of the top layer of the hood. No joy, couldn't get the tape to stick it well enough. I had some leftover spray adhesive and used that to tack the bottom part of the latch to the underside of the top layer of the hood. I ran the screws in tight enough to pull it up firm while the glue set. Bingo! I took the screws out after 10 minutes or so and installed the top part of the latch. Side note - although the nuts for the bottom latch are pressure fit into the latch, I put a piece of painters tape over each nut - I didn't want them falling out inside the hood and it'll never be seen anyway.

The final part, which actually took the longest, was fiddling with the adjustment to get the hood to close properly and sit firm on the rubber bumpers. I also had to tweak one of the pins over a bit with a rubber mallet as it was hitting on the latch. Minor adjustment, also had to trim 1/4" off of the rubber isolators for good fitment. All in all, it wasn't too bad of a job. I'm glad I started Friday night with the pin install, as that took some time. Although it wasn't difficult, it was hard to reach the bottom of the core support to hold the nuts. Pro-tip - unplug your headlight harness for more room.
 

Latest posts

Forum statistics

Threads
77,440
Messages
1,502,179
Members
14,920
Latest member
marktuck99

Members online

Top