OK so I'm contemplating how to refiinish my recent hood purchase and after reading some additional posts regarding how the louvers should be finished (mine are painted over in flat silver), I noticed some threads indicating the W29 442 louver hood had the Olds script mounted on the left side and that someone else on the board had trouble getting theirs to latch on a non-442 Cutlass.


Mine has the script - it is a (faux) louver and rear-vent equipped hood, so possibly mine is a W29 as well? if so, will there be an issue getting it to properly close on my non-442 ragtop?


Not a big fan of the hood script, so also contemplating having the holes filled in

 

The steel stamping is the same on every 2dr Cutlii - however the Oldsmobile script was only used on 442s since the 442 grills did not incorporate the script (lesser Cutlii did have the script on the grill). Since the basic metal parts are exactly the same, any latching problems are due to incorrect alignment, not the basic parts.

 

that's what I would have thought but I never take anything for granted when swapping body parts even from 1 model level to another - always the potential for some little nuance to ruin your day thanks for the reassurance!

 

The hood in the picture shows the Y73 hood stripe used on 1971 models. The faux hood louvers get painted by a lot of owners to personal preference. It depends on whether you're going for factory OEM look or not.

 

I just a while ago today found another set (pics) which appear to be in original and better condition than the ones on my hood so I'm probably going to strip the old paint out of the insets and refinish them in a flat or satin black to make the chrome ribs pop.


I think for me it would be too much red to do the insets in body color.

my current louvers are pitted all over the ribs and insets, no doubt why the prior owner painted them. The replacements I located have clean chrome and what appears (in pics at least) to be only minimal pitting in the insets.