FW Half Hood

[Chester]

Thinking about getting a half hood for my FW.

The only thing I'm not too keen on is fitting poppers to the bodywork.

Has anyone attached the rear straps to the harness eyes?

Anyone come up with a cunning way of fitting a half hood to a FW without drilling the bodywork?

Thanks

Mark

[Dave Eastwood (Gadgetman) - Club Chairman]

What roll bar have you got! I’ve used the uprights and the back stays on my old RAC roll bar before now, Simon at Westfield suggested it years ago.

You just use Jubillee clips or similar to attach the lower strap sections to the tubes, and obviously leave them on the car. On the RAC bar and ZK bodywork at least, it was possible to get the jubillee clips out of sight below the bodywork.

[Chester]

I have the standard roll bar - JAP i think it's also known as.

[Dave Eastwood (Gadgetman) - Club Chairman]

Ah, ok. Your options are rather more limited then.

You could possibly use the uprights for the side straps and fit the rear straps through the boot opening?

By the way, as far as I’m aware, only Soft Bits for Sevens do a half Hood for the Jap bar, and it was originally designed for ZK bodywork. You’d need to check it worked with FW.

[Chester]

Maybe I'll give Soft Bits a call and have a chat.

Thanks

[Dave Eastwood (Gadgetman) - Club Chairman]

8 minutes ago, Chester said:

Maybe I'll give Soft Bits a call and have a chat.

Thanks

Well worth it, they’re extremely good at taking one of their existing products and customising it for a specific job. You could have longer straps for instance, that reached down to more discrete locations for fasteners...

[Alan Cutler (Adge) - Dorset AO]

Can recommend SBFS half hood, just need to be patient from my experience. They tailor made one for my 250 (taller screen). Fitted male poppers under rear lip of FW body. Soon got used to to them. From what I could see, you would have to cut boot lid about quite a bit to fasten straps out of sight.

This is how mine ended up

[Marcus Barlow - Show and Events Co-ordinator]

I've taken my straps down through the boot lid gap and down and under the front side of the boot box and fitted the strap pull the dot popper to the boot box

 

 

[Chester]

AdgeC - like it, looks neat.

marcusb - the poppers don't look too visible.

Thanks!

[tc3nitro]

On ‎10‎/‎03‎/‎2018 at 18:22, marcusb said:

I've taken my straps down through the boot lid gap and down and under the front side of the boot box and fitted the strap pull the dot popper to the boot box

 

 

I don't suppose you have any pictures from when you fitted this or inside the boot box once fitted ?

 

This is the solution I have been looking for.

I have a trip to Nurberg in May and fear I my need some weather protection ! I had not even considered fitting a half hood because of unsightly fasteners with a SBFS half hood and hidden fasteners this could be just the answer.

[The Cheese]

This is what I did soft bits will make it how u want it 

I used the existing tenex that was there for my original hood 

[BugMan]

+1 for SBFS I love mine, and as the thread suggests the pop studs are pretty invisible and easy to fit to the bodywork.

Just need some of the split or peeal type rivets to anchor to the bodywork, which I had some spare from fitting the interior 

I followed AdgC and went for the zip option in the roof, which makes getting in/out a lot easier

And here are the 2 side straps

Hope this helps 

[Rhett Turner - Black Country AO]

On 10/03/2018 at 14:04, Chester said:

I have the standard roll bar - JAP i think it's also known as.

From the profile picture you have It does not look like a standard roll bar, it looks to be more like an RAC bar. A picture of the roll bar may help check to see what you have.

[kenton]

On mine I didn't want to drill into the cage so Jill (Soft bits) suggested a 3m Velcro pad stuck to the cage. the side straps have a Velcro  "cuff" that goes round the tube.

Works well and is very solid.

Kenton

 

[Dave Eastwood (Gadgetman) - Club Chairman]

35 minutes ago, Rhett - Joint Black Country AO said:

From the profile picture you have It does not look like a standard roll bar, it looks to be more like an RAC bar. A picture of the roll bar may help check to see what you have.

Agreed, the Jap bar is the plain, non-structural, cosmetic bar, with the sloping upper shoulders, it has no bracing.

Its hard to make out for sure in your profile picture, but the blue car appears to have diagonal cross bracing in the shape of an X, I can’t just make out the rear braces, it’s also  much taller than any of the standard bars. The X type cross bracing also means it’s not an RAC bar - unless it’s been modified. Could be an MSA bar? (I can’t remember if the Playskool bar had X type cross bracing, or just a single diagonal.)