The stock Corvette hood is a great design, very areodynamic and low profile. But in my old age, I've take the stance, It's my car and I'll screw it up if I want to. The MCM Hood had caught my eye. It was offered through Mallet and Zip Products. I ordered mine from Mallet mainly because I felt good about dealing with them and all my questions were answered to my satisfaction. I made arrangements to have the hood shipped to my body shop. Here is where you will have to make some choices. The carbon fiber hood is very light, but it does not paint up as well because the material changes demensionally with temperature. The stock hood does this too and you may have noticed it on your car if you have silver or peuter if you take your car out of a warm garrage on a cold day. After talking to Chuck Mallet I went with the carbon fiber/fiberglass mix. The next decision is to blend or not to blend the paint. You can not get silver or peuter body shop paint to exact match factory paint. Factory paint has different catalizers and is robotically applied. Factory paint on a silver Corvette is incredably good. I decided to paint the hood only and live with a slight mismatch instead of blending the paint in case I decided to put my factory hood back on. The hood comes ready to paint. It looks so good that it is easy to over look that there may be some minor voids along the seam lines that need to be filled, and also there is a mold line in the air scoop area that needs to filled before painting. The underside of the hood is solid black. You do not use a liner. Since it was pourous fiber, I decided to clear coat mine to seal it up. The fit is B+. I had to modify the bolt holes in the front hinges where they attach to the frame,so that the hood could be slid back about 1/8 inch. The picture was taken before this was done and you can see where the rubber seal at the front to the hood was pushed up. This has since been corrected.
Bottom line: I love the way this hood looks on my car. It gives it a very agressive stance. Between the hood, the intake modifications, and exhaust modifications, the sound is agressive but not overly so and at cruise you can carry on normal converation or enjoy the stereo. In certain lights you can see a slight color mismatch much like the color difference between the rear bumper and body you can see on the siver cars. Sorry if this is long and wordy, I'll be glad to take it off.
Mash


[Modified by LtMash1A, 5:27 PM 11/27/2001]

 

 

:confused: :confused:

 

OUCH! Sorry about that. How that thing get so large? :confused:

 

Looks like the Mallett hood!
You can get it from ZIP in carbon fever or non CF also.

But this one looks as it doesn´t fit perfect in the front.

Michael


[Modified by Austrian Vette, 8:49 AM 11/26/2001]