Reinforcing hood???

[driftman11]

Hello, I have a 71 super beetle. As most of you know, the hood is quite hard to come by as it was a 2 year only hood. Mine needs some substantial metal working to smooth it out. Undoubtedly, I will have to put filler on to get it completely smooth. I'm concerned though that the hood will flex after I have the filler work done and it will all crack out. Has anyone reinforced their hood? If so, any photos or links on how they did it? Examples always helps me

Also, if a fiberglass hood is the best option, where should shop for this at?

Thank you and let me know.

[theKbStockpiler]

To make the hood really firm you are going to have to cut pieces of reinforcement that are the same convex shape as the hood and then tie them in with the outside edge of the hood.

Another method would be to cloth fiberglass the whole inside of the hood but that is going to make it heavy.
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My beetle is not competing with your beetle. I have the yellow beetle in my town. There is a red one, a green one ......
Use all safety devices including a mask.

[driftman11]

Thank you for your response. I had someone else explain that the outside lip of the hood is what provides it rigidity. He also explained that cracks/tears of that lip around the front of the hood will cause the hood to lose the stiffness. I had 4 tears in the front of it, so I think if I try to actually save the hood, I will weld those up first to see how much stiffness it adds back before I go thru the long drawn out process of trying to get this hood smooth.

[theKbStockpiler]

Another way would be to lay something down in strips (ribs) on the inside like self adhesive weather stripping and just cloth the ribs to keep it lighter. I think I have seen boats stiffened up buy putting cloth fiberglass over cardboard tubes. The tubes or ribs just give the fiberglass a shape to adhere to.
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My beetle is not competing with your beetle. I have the yellow beetle in my town. There is a red one, a green one ......
Use all safety devices including a mask.

[Danpa]

Personally, I would strip all the paint off the outside and inside of the hood and keep working it with the hammer and dolly till you don't need any filler, just high build primer and maybe some feather fill at most.

Dan
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67 Beetle (gone)
68 Bay Window Double Cab (gone) sob, sob!
64 Beetle (gone)
77 Scirocco (gone)
73 Squareback (scrapped)
70 Beetle (current, in pieces)