I decided to use the Aerocatch hood pins on my factory steel Firebird hood for a couple reasons. One) my factory hood latch tended to be a little on the finicky side, working most times but sometimes not. I’ve done a lot of rewiring in the engine compartment, though I’m confident in my wiring skills there always a concern with fire, it maybe an irrational fear but you never know. Two) I really like the aesthetic of these hood pins.
I used blue painters tape to mark where to cut and when I pulled the tape off, off came the 30 year old clear coat, the cars gonna be painted in the spring so I’m not to upset about it, maybe I left the tape on for to long 🤷🏼‍♂️.



The worst part really was determining the location of the pins, the usual hood pin location put the latches to close to the edge of the hood above the headlight covers.


After a lot of measuring to ensure the latches are symmetrical on both sides the holes are cut with hole saws and a cutoff wheel

 

After the teardrop holes were cut I used a dremal to deburr and to fine tune the location of the latches, then the mounting holes were located and drilled.


Using the holes that were drilled through the top all of the way through the hood as guides, the holes were drilled out again using hole saws and a cutoff wheel, this part was challenging because of the different elevations of the under hood




After a lot of deburring and test fitting the latches I masked off the area to paint the inner hood to help protect it from rusting.

 

From here the latches were mounted


The hole here looks funky because of the camera angle, surprisingly I was able to get all of the holes pretty centered with one and another.


As for the pin locations, I ended up using some pre-existing holes that I drilled out larger using a step drill.

 

I know this is an older post but came across it while doing a Google search. I have a 3" fiberglass Harwood cowl hood on my 91 bird and the ends within the headlights are curling up a little bit so I was thinking of adding a set of aerocatch pins in pretty much the same location. Thanks for the write up and inspiration!