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The hood latches/pins were a bit of a bear to install. I bought some "flush under mount" Aerolatches (but I
meant to get the top mount) and was hoping to install them before the ECR test. Well we ran out of time and instead temporarily installed some simpler Sparco style hood pins for that track test. That took a couple of hours, whereas the Aerolatches took another 4+ hours to do correctly before we went to Nationals. Total PITA, but well worth it in the long run.
As you can see, they are much more aerodynamic, with considerably less drag when installed than the old school hood pin "posts" that protrude above the hood and have a separate securing pin that hooks through the hole in the post. The latches come with templates to use for marking and cutting the tapered oval openings and drilled holes for securing bolts. A very fiddly installation, so take your time and don't rush this. Aerolatches are not something you want to do the night before a race, trust me. It might take you an entire day to do 4 of them, if it is your first time.
The up/down alignment of the posts is critical, as is the angle of the post through the hood/into the latch, as is the latch alignment to the post. But once you have them installed and adjusted correctly (don't be afraid to use a light touch with a sledge hammer to persuade them during alignment) they mount flush, and when open the latches are very visibly so. Some folks paint the top of the latch a bright and contrasting color, so they are even more visible when open. But the black plastic stands out well against the red hood, so we left them unpainted. We used 4 across the hood to hold them down - some folks use only 2, but on an S197 there are 4 rubber "hood bumpers" that make for great spots to mount the pins/latches.
The hood struts we added to this car are nice, but everything has limits. As some of you may remember, one of these struts popped loose last May in some 30+ mph wind gusts, and the hood went crashing into the windshield. This was when the car was parked in the grid, facing into the wind, during an SCCA National Tour event in Nebraska. We had to finish the weekend with a destroyed windshield, and the hood was damaged every so slightly at the rear corners. It broke one hood hinge, too, which we replaced. So we don't trust the hood struts completely, and have been using these + the OEM hood prop to hold the hood from opening completely whenever there is even the slightest breeze in grid or paddock.
But having these
self-raising hood struts is convenient, and now that the 3" diameter intake tubing is passing right over the top of the radiator, the hood prop no longer fits with the hood down. With the new hood we had just been using a broom handle to hold the hood up in paddock and the shop after we added the hood ducting and intake tube - but after the stick was bumped, it fell off and the hood bonked into my noggin, I went ahead and grabbed the hood-side mounts off of the old hood and reinstalled the hood struts. Two holes to drill on the hood and everything transferred over. Well except the bottom end of one hood strut was smashed in the previous "paddock incident" (the plastic end cup is broken), so I spent half an hour looking through all of the OEM replacement hood struts at the local parts store, found one that
kind of fit, and it worked enough for careful use at Nationals. With some zip ties holding it together. Just use some common sense when pointed into the wind, or you could face the same consequences we did (new windshield + new hood hinge + damaged hood). Called RedlineTuning and they are sending us the plastic replacement end for the strut, free of charge - thanks.
On Saturday before we were to leave Ryan had the calipers off to make new brake ducting backing plates for our car. We've been making these for customers in small batches, and will add them to our website in the next week or so, as front brake ducting kits for the 14" Brembo cars. During the reinstall of the calipers one of the M12 bolts stripped out the threaded hole in the aluminum caliper - which figures, because Ryan asked for new calipers 2 months ago, and I had said "Nah, these are fine..." We figured these holes have been screwed and unscrewed close to 150 times, so it was time to replace them. We couldn't get a replacement caliper on the 3-day Labor Day weekend and were set to leave early Tuesday morning, so I picked up a heli-coil kit at a local NAPA and Ryan fixed that on Monday.
Our previous set of backing plates (our first set we made about 2 years ago) were as bad as most out there, having had the cooling hose pointed mostly at the rotor face. The new ducts our guys built have the inlet moved inboard, to blow air inside the rotor's friction ring and at the hub. This lets the vanes of the rotor pull the air through the inside of the rotor and out, and also cools the front hubs. Our plates have the
correct tubing size to fit inside a 3" brake duct hose without having to remove the reinforcing metal ring winding in the brake duct hose, unlike all of the other brake cooling kits we have installed before (including the Ford Racing kit). It isn't that hard to do it right, but nobody else seems to. Our plates are made from new OEM backing plates, trimmed down with a piece left in place to shield the tie rod from rotor heat, yet leaving the rotor face open. We bead blast them to raw metal, cut to fit the round tubing, TIG weld it all together, then have them powder coated black. More on these as soon as we get a batch back from the powder coater and added to our website.
Since we didn't want to get any grief from NASA's "50/50" rule (the car has to look good from 50 feet at 50 mph), we had to pull the car apart for paint before heading to Nationals. We sent the fenders on Wednesday night, and we got them the hood and bumper cover by Friday on the Labor Day weekend. They had it all painted by Sunday, and it came out great. We rushed the heck out of them and the hood wasn't cut and buffed, but we were out of time and picked it up anyway.
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