My 68 442 had a flat hood on it when I bought it. So a while back, hoping I would one day be in a position to redo the car, I picked up a cutlass supreme hood off ebay and stuck it in the basement. I knew it was in rough shape, but now that I am getting the car redone, my paint guy isn't sure its even salvageable. The nose is rusted out (the way they do), there are a lot of small dents, and someone gave it a skim coat of filler at some point. What concerns him the most is that when grinding the paint and filler off, the the center of the hood started to "oil can," meaning i guess that its sort of turned flimsy, and wants to bulge in and out. He's worried that if we use it, when its in the sun, it will flex and crack the paint.

Is this fixable? Is this a trouble spot common to these hoods? Do the louvers and vent add rigidity to that area once they're on the car?

If there is anything that can save me from spending $1000 plus shipping for a fiberglass hood from vfw, I'd love to hear about it.

 

The 68 fiberglass hood will need another 1000 dollars worth of work.
to have the vent and side vents installed.
So be prepared, for that

 

I would look for a clean straight rust free original hood that does not need that much work.

 

Fair enough, but they're not exactly plentiful. This one was hard enough to find and that was 15 years ago.

Yup, in for a penny in for a pound. Were you happy with your results though?

 

Yes I am.
Lucky I found a retired body man.
With some free time.

 

Looks like it came together really well!

I hope my retired body man does at least as well as yours did.

 

Just for the record, '68 442s never came from the factory with a "flat" hood. Both the 442s and Cutlass Ss had the cowl, louvered hood from the factory. Cutlass Supremes came from the factory with a flat hood like F85s and (plain) Cutlasses.

 

If you decide to go fiberglass I would be interested in the old hood. Located in Ct. Greg

 

Accurate. If the flat hood were correct, it would be staying on the car. As with many posts on this forum, we are having this conversation because of a previous owner's poor decision making and/or lack of resources!

Still not sure where this is going, but I will keep you in mind and PM if i don't use it.

 

Thanks much appreciated, Greg

 

Yes, the oil canning is repairable. Is the rust repairable to salvage the hood?

 

So given the choice between going fiberglass or trying to repair, my body guy scratched his head for about 2 weeks and decided to try a repair.

Heat shrink for the center of the hood, and patches in the front. Came out nice! Glad we kept it out of the junkyard.






Sorry, Greg!

 

Looks like the guy bent up a new piece of steel and did a cut out and butt weld process? Looks good in primer!

Nice to save the old steel as much as possible.

 

That looks like it came out really nice. I tried going with the fiberglass and I'm a bit frustrated with it. You had the option of having a body guy do it and thats the way to go there. Steel hood looks soooo much better Good for you, I think you made the right choice.