351PONY

Well thru persistence (i.e. bugging the sh*t out of them), I finally got a final decision from RK Sport yesterday. They are picking up the hood that was sent and are making me a new one. The gentleman assured me that they would make sure this one will arrive without all the defects. By the way this hood is supposed to be finished top and bottom (see attached pics from their website). As I said initially, I'll reserve final judgement on RK Sport until this whole thing is done.

On a sidenote, I saw the post for the new 1968 Shelby style hood being created by Nichepi. That thing is sweeeeeet! Had I known you were going to create this hood (making it fully functional) and sell them for a fraction of what I just paid, you would have had my business! [sm=drooldude.gif]



[IMG]local://upfiles/25306/2BB2FEDB98D5485B961FE9F6895575C1.jpg[/IMG]

Nichepi

Well it just comes down to production manufacturing.
We do 25% of production and all R&D here in the states and most the hoods are made in Japan.
I mean we tried to have several companies here in the US re-manufacture our hoods but as were growing by leeps and bounds(averaging 25 Cobra R2000 hoods a month here + distributors) no domestic company could keep up with the quality. And most quotes for fiberglass came out to around 800.00 so I know where their coming from. We dumped a ton of money into buying out a portion of a manufacturing company out in Japan and honestly the quality is top notch and so is the materials. We could have done china but the quality wouldn't have been as good.

The obvious trade off is we tend to run out of stuff fast as we wait for shipments, but the upside is stuff is the best quality, better technology such as vacuum bagging and autoclaves so we can control weight to resin ratio's. and price.
If i tried to make the same hood in michigan by say some of the larger companies that work with ford your looking at 800-1000 for a fiberglass hood.

stangman05

ATTN NICHEPI Do you have pics of your hood that is produced? I would like to see it Thanks

Nichepi

their are some non 05 examples over here:
https://mustangforums.com/fb.asp?m=1058759

05vert

That's too bad...sorry to hear it. I guess I got lucky....mine came in great shape. My painter who does only custom bike/car stuff, said it was one of the best he's seen.....

351PONY

Well the replacement hood finally arrived today (almost two weeks later then they said it would be). Believe it or not, even after calling them and raising hell about the quality of their hood and them assuring me this was a fluke and that they would send a replacement right away and that he would personally inspect it to make sure it was right before it left...it's still screwed up! [:@]

I finally just bit the bullet and told the body shop to make it right. Luckily this one will only require about four hours of re-work to make it look right. Just kills me that they sell these hoods as 'ready to paint' and they are anything but. One things for sure, I will never buy anything from them again.

Anyway, the car goes in on Monday and I should have it back the following Friday. I'll post pictures as soon as it's back.

jbailer

Sorry to hear about the hood and the pain you've had to go through. Until recently, I've never seen a fiberglass hood come out without some rough edges, veriations in thickness and just in general need of cleaning up. I just got my Cervini's hood and was EXTREMELY impressed! It was perfect, ready to paint. The most impressive part was when you look at the under-side of the hood. That's where even an "ok" fiberglass hood will show tons of imperfections. This one was smooth as silk, it looked like a metal hood. -Joe