I have a harwood 3" cowl hood on the project car, it fits OK, but not perfect, and have a bunch of issues that I'm trying to figure out the best way to address them. It's there for a functional reason, but I'm concerned about making it look better (it will never be a show car, but I care about the looks more than on my daily driver)

1- There are a bunch of minor shipping dings, exposed joints from where the bottom was bonded to the top and even chipped areas where the headlight doors hit it (I bought it used), I'm worried about both filling them with something fairly durable since many of them are on corners or other "wear" areas and making sure water doesn't eventually work it's way into the fibers causing them to swell (I have a daily driver with a factory 'glass hood that has this problem)- what is the right way to deal with them? I'm leaning towards some 'glass reenforced filler, it's stronger and waterproof. Are the less common "professional" products really better WRT to the finished product that just 'glass bondo? is this also appropriate for the bonded seams, or should I use something else or just lightly sand them smooth and paint them (they're not visible unless you open the hood, it's not like I _have_ to cover them).

2- I mounted it on the car to test fit it and it's been there for a couple of weeks and I've driven it a bit, since then I've noticed some hairline cracks developed in the gellcoat over the hing mounting points (I don't have any hood lifts installed, it is a bolt on hood...), what's the best way of dealing with them? I know that if I just go over the top of them they'll show up again in the topcoat.

3- Finally, are there any tricks to getting it to fit better? Like most lightweight 'glass parts that I've seen, the corners tend to sit a little high/edges not quite line up (actually, the whole hood is slightly dimensionally shorter than a factory steel one, I'm sure all of this is the result of a little bit of shrinkage). Yes, some of it can be fixed with some sanding, and I've already backed off all the bump stops, loosened all the surrounding body panels and moved everything around to line it up as best as I can (and honestly, it looks better than 99% of similar hoods out there, it's not embarrassing), but the headlight doors just will not adjust high enough to meet the contour of the front of the hood, and they're already above the contour of the adjacent fenders, which there isn't much I can do about (and again, it's not contacting the rubber bump stops under that area at all). The real solution is if I could bend the corners of the hood down some (yea, you could carefully do this with steel, sort of tweak the whole panel a little bit). Anyone have any ideas how to do this or another way of addressing the problem?