After a couple years of patiently waiting I scored a solid, no rust no dents hood with louvers in excellent condition for $160., I will need to remove the louvers for paint and there is no insulation, just the plastic retaining discs. I know from removing louvers the last time I painted the studs tend to break off, last time I broke only one but that was fifteen years ago, I was thinking silicone spray and possibly slightly warming with heat gun, anyone have a proven method? and replacement insulation suggestions would be appreciated

 

I've got the hood insulation from my car sitting in the shed, and I believe most of the clips for it. Replacement clips can be found in the help! section at places like Advance or Autozone.

 

Most of mine had broken off. Was considering using a kind of backing panel I could attach somehow and bolt through that into the hood. There's also those other pieces that look like reverse cowls that fit into the same spot on that kind of hood. I was going to use those instead.

 

The tough thing is their age and plastic construction. I've never removed mine but I see that some of the speed nuts are missing. I'd research ways of successful removal. I'm sure someone in youtube land has done it.

 

Best thing to do would be to prolly just soak them in pb blaster and heat up the metal nuts a little bit and slowly take them off. If they break I'm sure you could just epoxy them back on.

I did mine the old fashioned way and broke off all but maybe 3 of them.

 

Turn the hood upside down, fill the holes in the studs with epoxy and let em dry. Best chance for removal without breaking them IMO.

If you could find some way of scuffing the inside of the hole without breaking anything, it would give the epoxy that much more to grab on to. (maybe a bent needle?)

with the price of louvers, you cant help but want to strengthen them any way possible heh...

 

did you have to do anything, like heat to help the factory adhesive to release? my old hood still has the original insulation, thank you and the others for their inputs

 

To get the insulation off the hood? No, it's held in place with a bunch of push clips. This is the 3rd of these cars that I've owned, I've taken the insulation off all of them, not one of them had the insulation held in place by anything but the push clips.

 

Ah, that's a good idea! I'll have to try the epoxy trick next time.

 

No matter what you do the studs are going to break off and need to be repaired. Here is a link to my thread on how I fixed mine. https://www.thirdgen.org/forums/body/698496-louver-stud-repair.html

Hope this will help.

 

I practiced on my old, bent, hood. I used a solvent free silicone spray and didn't warm them up as our temperature was in the low 80's the other day, I have broken 3 off, years ago when I painted the car and they broke off right at the nut, this time one broke loose at the louver taking a piece of the underside of the louver. talking to another gear head, his experience is that many times when the louvers are removed the underside has various types of dust and debris. His theory is that with heating and cooling cycles this adds to the stress on the attachment. the link to the repair is helpfull, hopefully the other hood will release them without damage as the donor car was a garage car. as for my insulation the leading and trailing edges had some adhesive in areas that were tearing a bit, the car was only one the track one season but the engine and trans had been pulled several times.