A Car Called Bob... Hood Replacement

First thing to do is remove the hood from the front of the frame. If you want to keep the hood, it's a bit harder to do. If you don't care, then snip away or cut the material with a stanley knife along the top edge where it meets the windscreen. If you want to save it, you need to be careful. First remove the front hood clamps using an allen key to take out the three bolts. Put the clamps somewhere safe with the bolts. Next, you need to prise off the c section plastic from the front edge as shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1

Remove the vinyl cover over the metal of the front bow. This is a bit awkward as it will be stuck down with glue. I used a wallpaper stripper pallet knife to get under it. There are little metal clips retaining the vinyl to the front bow, you will need to flick these off with a flat head screwdriver. Take care as they are sharp. Put the c-section, clips and vinyl to one side. You will now see that the hood fabric is attached by it being folded over the front bow, and held in place at the corners with steel clips pressed out of the metal of the front bow, and then the fabric riveted along the front bow. Figure 2 shows the fabric after removal from the front bow by drilling the rivets out with a 7mm drill bit. The corners were extracted by bending the metal clips outward and working the material over them.

Figure 2

There is also a piece of rubber over the corners as shown in Figure 3. This is held in by a plastic dowel which can be pushed out. Don't drill it out (as I did) becuase you don't get new ones in the kit!! BAS International very kindly gave me two new ones.

Figure 3

Figure 3 shows this rubber thing, but you can see that I have also drilled out the rivets and prised the hood fabric off the bow also. Figure 4 shows the whole of the front bow with the rivets drilled out. At this point I had only drilled off the tops of the rivets using a 7mm drill bit. To remove the rest of the rivet I switched to a 3.2mm (1/8 th will do) drill bit, and carefully cleared out the holes. The problem here is that you end up with the ends of the rivets in the hollow front bow. They rattle around when you go round corners! There are various solutions to this, in time they will fall out under hard cornering, or you can catch them in some mastic or expanding foam squirted into the hollow front bow.

Figure 4

You will see that there are cables threaded through the edge of the hood on each side above the door window seals. These are an IMPORTANT part of the frame and must not be cut. In order to get the hood off, you need to undo the cable at the front bow. It is held on by a loop of the cable being hooked over a metal tongue similar to those holding the hood fabric on at the corners. You just need to prise the tongue back and unhook the cables from the front bow. Obviously the frame needs to be folded back a bit to allow the cables to have some slack in them. After sorting this out, I was able to cut the fabric around the second an third bows to get the hood clear of these (Figure 5).

Figure 5

Figure 6 shows the remains of the hood fabric after this was done, and Figure 7 shows the frame at this point.

Figure 6

Figure 7

Figure 8

Figure 9

Figure 10

Figure 11

Figure 12

Figure 13

Figure 14

Figure 15

Moving to the side bars behind the side windows, you will see a rubber seal (Figure 9) slide this down towards the ground. to pull it out. It can be a little stiff, but it is greased, so should slide out of the plastic retainer (Figure 10). You might have to move the frame forward or back to get the best grip on it. You will find after you remove the rubber seal that the plastic retainer is riveted in place ( Figure 9). You will need to carefully drill these rivets out. This will remove the plastic retainer. You are advised to put the seal back onto the retainer it came from to avoid getting them mixed up! Put it safely to one side. Next, you need to prise off the hood fabric which has been glued in place. The fabric is bonded to plastic here, and the fabric and plastic should come off together. (Figure 11). I found a wallpaper stripper pallet knife the best for this as shown in Figure 12. You will also find a butterfly clip holding the fabric onto the side bar at the bottom (Figure 13) you will need to prise this off with a screw driver (Figure 14) then the hood is clear (Figure 15) up to the T-bar!

When you have done both sides, all that is left to do with regard to removal is get the rear screen section off. To do this, first get some dust sheets to protect the car and the screen.

Move to the rear bow. This is the one that has a clamp to retain the zipper for the rear screen at the top. First you peel back the sticky backed felt. (Figure 16). This will reveal two philips head screws (red arrows in Figure 17). Undo these to release one side of the back bow retaining clamp. Next you will need to undo all the bolts that hold the retaining clamp to the back bow. A socket set will be required here due to the shape of the bow and the recessed nature of the nuts. Feel underneath the back bow, and you will find recessed holes. Inside these holes are the nuts that hold the clamp bolts in place. Undo these one by one and the retaining clamp will come off as shown in Figure 18.

Figure 16

Figure 17

Figure 18

The last stage of hood removal is removing the hood fabric from the rear clamping bar. The rear clamping bar is held in place with 5 clasps, which hide under the parcel shelf carpet. Remove the carpet, but you can leave the noise deadening foam under it in place. Sometimes however the carpet is glued to the foam. Release all the clasps and fold the rear clamping bar forwards towards the front of the car. Place your dust sheet over the car bodywork as this bit gets messy!

Surounding the rear clamping bar is a metal strip which clamps the hood fabric down. This is pop riveted along its length. The strip is sometimes covered with sticky back foam stuff which you have to peel off. I found it easier to just feel for the rivets, scrape the foam away from around the rivet and drill it out. Again use a 7mm to drill the head off, and a 3.2mm drill bit to clear the hole.

Figure 19

| Images and Text © 2006 Iain Ross |

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