I am going to try to post some pictures here...

Get a different hood. Harwood sucks. I have THREE of their hoods in my back yard for my 2000 Ram, none of them fit. Ive even driven to Tyler to their factory to have them look at my second hood they sent me. After about 4 months of them reworking the mold, the sent me a third hood. It does not fit either. They claimed that they had pre-fit the hood to a test truck there at the factory and trimmed it to fit and made sure it was good to go BEFORE shipping.

I unfortunately took that statement at face value. I spent quite a few nights after work, getting the hood's ram-air inlets custom opened to be functional. Got it all perfect, gave it a couple shots of primer. Then put it on the the truck to do a final fitting. That's when I found out how bad it fit and it could have never been fitted to a ram at their factory. So, hood number three, sets in the back yard with the other two. 550 bucks out of pocket and nothing to show for it.

I've never heard back from the manager out there. Seems like every time I call, I get a new manager because the old one "no longer works here".

There's a nice long story for ya.

The last hood I got. This was after I finished making the ram-air inlets and priming the hood, prior to me finding out the SOB would not fit.




The day they shipped me Hood No. 3


Both my Rams. First Harwood hood here. This one sat on the cowl and left the rear edges about 3/4 inch above the doors/fenders.

Thanks. Sorry you had problems too. The guy at Harwood suggested heating it with a halogen light, and then weighting it down, so I tried this...





I drove the car for the first time today since installing the hood, and as luck would have it, the thing popped up again to where it was before. Right now it is out in the sun, with the clamps back on.

If it keeps coming back up, I figured another way that might fix it. But bottom line, I'm hanging onto my steel hood for now, and I don't think I would get one of these again.

Dan

Yep, this is the unfortunate "state of the art" with most of these fiberglass parts nowdays. Most of the molds aren't accurate to begin with, then they only deteriorate more with time yielding ever wosrs ill fitting parts.

Daniel, bottom line on that hood. Just follow my logic on this... If heat is somewhat "fixing" the distortion as you weight it out then heat will surely undo (since the weight or jig is not present) what you have done. First, good sunny day and Pop!, the profile is back to original.

You were on the right track with your original post. Get some saw kerfs (the cuts you pointed out) in their to flex the area, jig it into shape, and then get some more glass and resin on the underside and the edge. If it was me I'd probably end up re-supporting that whole hood underneath. Problem with that is you'll be adding back weight which is probably what you were trying to get rid of with the old steel hood.
Can you tell I've been down this path a few times, too??? Hope you can get it worked out. Fiberglass is challenging, especially with trying to overcome the poor quality thing, but it's big advantage is that it is infinitely shapeable.

I really dont think cutting slits in the rolled edge, then trying to re-glass over it will do any good. If anything it will give the gel-coat a place to crack around the corners after being flexed during opening and closing of the hood.

My hood it's problem is much worse. It's about a half to 3/4 inch too narrow overall, where it meets the fenders. Plus they trimmed the small line where it meets the doors too far back, so I'd have to build up a quarter inch of glass mat to the back edges of the hood.

To fix the narrowness problem, I'd have to saw the hood in half down the friggin middle, and add a half inch or more strip down the the middle.

Harwood, it aint no good.

OK, here's a little more info...

I also had a problem with the back of the hood. There just isn't enough room for the wiper arms. I expected that I might have to grind away some of the "flange", but actually I had to grind away ALL of it in places, plus thin the underside, and actually perforated through into the airbox area (which I will have to repair at some point). I don't know if all of this weakened the hood significantly. In addition to all of that, once I ground away as much as I thought I could get away with, I shimmed the wiper mechanism down, and also bent the wiper arm. Finally I got it so it would work. It still rubs just a bit going to and from "park" position, but I think I can fix that.

Ram This, I can't imagine splitting the hood and making that work--I hope you are kidding...

DarrlK, I think you may be right as far as the fit on the sides goes. It may have "memory", so unless I counteract that somehow, the heat and bend technique may only be a temporary fix. I have thought of a way that I might fix this that is a little less invasive, and shouldn't add too much weight. I am thinking of 1/2 to 3/4" aluminum "angle stock" (stuff that is "L shaped" in cross section) bonded to the underside of the side of the hood where it wants to bow up. I could also perforate the aluminum bar for added retention, and bond a couple layers of fiberglass over it. I might have to drill a couple of holes to temporarily hold the thing in place while the resin cures as I clamp the hood into position. I will have to think about the best way to accomplish that, but I think once in place, it would be rigid and stable. What do you think?

When metal support is added fiberglass that is that thin and exposed the metal itself will load with heat and expand at different rates than the surrounding glass work. After a few heating and cooling cycles it will probably delaminate. It just bothers me because I know these hoods are so darn thin to begin with. I think I'd stick with some more resin, matt, cloth, etc. under there after getting it to shape.
Oh, by the way, I don't think Ram This is kidding on the splitting the hood thing. I've done it with fenders and one-piece tilt hood front ends before. Fiberglass moves in a lot of ways you don't expect, somtimes radical surgery is call for...

Nope, wasnt kidding about splitting the hood. I could do it, but I wont because once it's cured and out of the mold, it should hold it's shape very well, especially since it's a two piece inner and outer shell , and the inner, or under skin, is bonded to the outer body skin, while the outer skin is still in it's mold. So, if it doesn fit, it's not the part, it's the mold. And why would the mold be wrong? The Plug was wrong that the mold was made off of. And why would the plug be wrong? Lotsa reasons could be at hand here. In my case, the hood is too narrow. Could be they bowed the middle of the plug up, causing the sides to pull in some and they didnt notice this. They would have waxed with with some partall or some other release agent, put down a layer of tooling gelcoat, backed by layers of random mat and resin, then some support structure to stabilize it glassed to the backside, then seperated the production mold from the plug. Voila, one beautiful, shiny, out of shape mold. When you make parts off it, every one will display the same defect. When I told them of all the problems I had with my first one, they pulled one from stock, put it on a truck, and said he saw exactly the problems I saw and described to him.

Your car would be harder for them to find a straight example of, to bring in and test fit a hood to and verify they have a problem unfortunately.

As for bracing the hood from underneath, dont use aluminum. It will expand and contract too much. I'd use some steel 1" angle if you plan to try and brace it to shape from underneath. Get some Cleco's, #30's and #10's. You can get them from www.aircraftspruce.com. These will allow you to drill holes in the steel brace and in the inner skin of your hood, and they will hold it firlmly in place while you get the shape sorted out. You can unclamp the piece, bow it down some, reclamp it with cleco's to hold the hood against the brace, and trial fit it again. Once you get it like you want, use some 3M DP360 adhesive with some 60 to 80 grit sand marks to adhere the brace under the hood. Then, lay a couple layers of 6 oz plain weave cloth over the brace, about 6" out, with the weave at 90 degrees to the brace, then the next layer at 45 degrees to the brace. It just might hold for a good while. You could also try popping some holes in betweent he cleco's and putting in some pop rivets to give it more bite.

Thanks for the additional information. Wow, some things I would not have thought of, like the coeffecient of thermal expansion of aluminum.

If I were to use steel, probably the stuff to use would be the "perforated" type--not as heavy and also some built-in retention areas, to hopefully prevent delamination. I do hate to add weight though. The idea of ditching the steel hood is to reduce weight.

I'll have to wait for a hot sunny day, and see how bad it gets.