dzus or hood pin fasteners?

[daveL82]

My 80 vette is sometimes drive on the street for short runs but mainly used for track days. Body already has flares.

After getting tired of try to work on the front end leaning over the fenders so I decided to pull the front section of body off the car from firewall forward. Much easier than I expected.

Now I need to figure out how to re-attach with quick release fastners. The back of the hood already has hood pins. I can make the inner fender easy to remove with some bolts. I will weld a bracket to carry the hood indges instead of the inner fender.

I was thinking about using hood pins with one at the front center, two either side where the hood normally bots to the inner fender and two low down on the sides near the side vents. Maybe dzus at top of fender.

Any racers got any input?

 

[JeffP1167]

I once pondered with fiberglassing the hood to the fenders on my 82 and then attach the front bumper cover like a C4 and make the front clip flip up like a c4. Yeah not removeable pieces like what you want but might make easier to work on.

 

[bobs77vet]

some of my british sports car had the dzus fasteners if they are the same the repeated use of them makes them kind of sloppy.....they would be ok for fastening something you dont access too much, but for all the time access the ones i had were not substantial enough

 

[GT6Steve]

I'm a bit surprised with Bob's experience with the Dzus's. I was just about to vote for them as they've worked well for me.

But, I wasn't joining big body panels, just interior panels. There's a huge difference in load and stress between the two applications.

I would think a genuine Dzus product would be fine as they have a long reputaion of performance?

 

[redvetracr]

I have 4 Dzus clips spaced out down the rear of each fender, my hood Dzus clips with brackets mounted to the drip edge of the front end.

 

[daveL82]

Thanks and I'll order the Dzus fastners tomorrow. I can use a hood pin in the front center to add support as I've decided to use the 80s front sub frame. Replace bolt from below with pin from above.