So with tax returns impending, I'm thinking seriously about ordering up a Tiger Racing hood once again.
My question is this- it looks like they're about $1000 everywhere for a the fiberglass version, plus $100-$200 for shipping. Not cheap but not hideous...unfortunately, that's a white gel coat finish and it will require some paint.
Do you suspect that a careful rattlecan application of flat black would look ok for the short term while a fella saved up for a "real" paint job? Has anyone tried this? I suspect it could come out horribly.
Otherwise, is the $500 paint job quote that I got last year petty average for a quality job?
Thanks for any thoughts...
A local painter here in the Dallas area has installed and painted several of these Tiger hoods for S197 Mustangs. He told me he charges $800+ to fit and paint this hood. Here's his process:
1. Leave the Tiger Racing hood sitting outside in direct sunlight for at least
2 weeks. This allows it to heat up and cool down and "settle" a bit.
2. He then fits the hood to the car. This takes a lot of installing & removing, sanding of the edges, blocking and filling on the surface, etc.
3. Then its ready to prime, block again, and paint.
Like most aftermarket composite hoods, these need a good bit of work to fit well, to take paint, and have a production like finish.
It sounds like a lot of work, because it is. These don't fit any worse than other quality composite hoods, but don't just expect to bolt it on and have it fit on your first try. The gaps will need tweaking, the surface will need some work, etc. If its a race car then sometimes people can live with worse gaps and waviness than you'd see on a nice street car.
ALL aftermarket composite hoods need to be fitted to the car. They cannot be held to close, factory dimensions like stamped steel or aluminum factory parts. We've worked with this hood as well as many others, and the quality is pretty good on the Tiger.
We installed this Seibon S197 "GT500" hood for a customer and it fit a little better but it was by no means perfect. This "carbon" hood was a layer of carbon over a relatively heavy fiberglass hood - like most of the "carbon" hoods you see for sale for these cars.
We used this hood because we felt it had the hood venting more properly placed than the Tiger hood - where it could extract from behind the radiator and not all the way at the middle to back of the hood (which has higher pressure).
Of course we cut out the small-ish GT500 opening and tripled the cut opening size, then added a louvered vent. All in all it fit pretty well for a $1200 hood. The right way to finish this still takes sanding and paint but the customer wanted to keep it the carbon fiber finish. Its not as light as the Tiger hood, but it also hasn't cracked in over 18 months of use.
Personally I like the OEM aluminum hoods on the 2005-14 S197 cars. We can work with these and get them vented properly and they are no heavier than most of the aftermarket composite hoods. But I get it - the Tiger hood looks cool and everyone loves it.
