Thread: Dzus fasteners on a fiberglass hood top

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I could use a little help here. It is time to attach the hood on my 1931 roadster pickup project, and as I am only running a fiberglass hood top with no sidepanels, I thought perhap the 1/4 turn Dzus fasners would be the way to go. I went to the Dzus website, and they have as many different kinds of fasteners as there are fleas on a dog, which only left me confused. At the rear of the hood, the fiberglass hood is 1/8" thick, the lacing is about 1/16" thick, and directly under the lacing is my steel cowl, which is between 1/32" and 1/16" thick. At the front of the hood, the hood and lacing are the same thickness, however the fiberglass grillshell is about 3/16" thick, backed up by a 1/8" plate stiffner on the inside of the grillshell. Does anyone out there have some familiarity with these faseners, how forgiving are they in respect to material thickness they will clamp on, how many would you use on a model A hood top, what do they look like on the exposed part which shows (I have only seen them in rod magazines, pictures too small for any detail), and how do they attach to the cowl and grillshell? Does the exposed portion have a protective bezel around it that doesn't turn, or does it turn directly against the painted hood? If you are running a glass hood on your car with this type of fastener what part number of fastener did you use? Better yet, does anyone know of a source for them in Ontario Canada. Any help or pictures would be appreciated. Please don't refer me to the dzus website, I've been there already. Thanx a lot---Brian

O.K. Guys---I have been building rods for close to 40 years. I have built some very innovative machinery over the years, and have #1--built a hood on a 31 Desoto coupe, that hinged at the rear and opened alligator style with handbuilt hinges that were hidden (they actually extended to the inside of the firewall and were not unlike hidden hinges on a car door) and #2 built a 27 Ford roadster with a one peice hood top and with sidepanels of aluminum that were formed on a buck with cut-outs for the Sanderson Limefire headers. The hood was piano hinged and had a completely hidden latch assembly which I fabricated. These hoods were individually hand formed, (one with an english wheel, one with a leather slapper over an oxygen cylinder). The thing is, since I formed these hoods to be a perfect fit, they lay down where they were supposed to, and fit tight to the cowl and firewall. On this current hood issue, I am working with someone elses abandoned project which I bought and am finishing. The hood is a generic fiberglass hood, which was supposed to fit a 31 cowl and a 32 shell. It does fit the cowl alright, but as you see in the picture, it contacts the shell in the center and on the outside edges, but halfway between the center and outside edge of the grillshell, it "humps up" about 1/4" on both sides. Very light thumb pressure in that area brings the hood down to a perfect fit. There is really nothing that can be done on the edges of the hood that will correct this fit. Since I have not yet built any type of hinged substructure, and since once the car is finished, it will run no sidepanels on the hood, and consequently the hood top will seldom be removed, I thought maybe a set of Dzus faseners would both hold the hood on the car, and also provide pressure in the required areas to pull the hood down into the correct profile to match the grillshell perfectly. (only a very light pressure is required to do this). As far as the hidden slide latches that someone mentioned, I have done that before. This only works if you are running no hood sides. The local hardware store should be able to supply you with a door "sliding latch bolt" that has a spring in it to keep it extended all the time. You need one on each corner of the hood, and have to drill a hole thru the firewall on 2 sides as well as fabricate something on the grillshell on each side to receive the noses of these cylindrical sliding bolts. With a little creative work they can be installed so that they are not visible. Trouble is, if you run sidepanels, there is no way to reach in and unlock the suckers.