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PAT 4 > Issue 10: Seibon TS CF Hood, CF Engine Cover, CF B-Pillar Covers
Written By: David Pitlyuk
It's back to looks in this issue. To continue with our orange/black/grey/carbon fiber theme, we've got a couple goodies to be installed. In this issue we'll be putting on:
- Seibon Type-TS Carbon Fiber Hood
- Carbon Fiber Engine Cover
- Evo-R Carbon Fiber B-Pillar Covers
First off, I would like to thank David from 350ZForums.org for helping us get the hood. Obviously the Seibon hood will be a huge improvement and difference in the looks of our project Z. Normally a carbon fiber hood would offer pretty drastic weight reduction, but in the case of the 350Z, the factory hood is made out of a lightweight aluminum. I wasn't able to do a weight comparison of the two hoods, but they are very similar. The TS hood is not only carbon fiber but has additional styling cues in that it has a gill on each side with diamond hole mesh pre-installed. We wanted to go carbon fiber on the hood, but I think the gills really set it off nicely and give the car a much more aggressive stance. The carbon fiber engine and b-pillar covers will just help with the overall theme, and better accent the hood.
Lets start off with the hood installation...
Here's a shot of the hood out of box...gorgeous isn't it!
Next, simple remove the four nuts from the back of each side of the hood. Be careful because this is the only thing securing the hood. We put a towel down to ensure that we don't scratch anything on the car.
You'll end up like this:
Here's a shot of the brackets securing the hood:
A quick test fit to make give us a preview of how it will look:
Beautiful weaves!
Simply install the new hood with the provided bolts. Seibon forgot to include the new bolts, so I had to go get some, and use some spacers to make it all work perfectly:
Remove the covers for the gills, this is just a bunch of regular screws.
In order to get the hood to latch, we moved the factory latch up, and also had to bend this, as the new hood latch wasn't fitting correctly:
It took a lot of playing around with until it fit right, but we finally got it to the point where it would latch correctly.
And here it is finally installed:
As a note, we had some fitment issues originally. After we finally got everything latched up, the left front side of the hood was sticking up pretty drastically. Over time, the hood eventually start to come down, and looks perfect now. Hood latches should have also fixed this issue, and are also highly recommended for safety issues.
For the b-pillar covers, simply clean the surface up with alcohol pads, spread the adhesion promoter, and stick them on. Very easy to do, and it matches the hood great!
For the engine cover, simply remove the bolts holding the factory engine cover in place, and replace with the new cover. You may or may not need to remove the front strut tower brace on one side and push it up (we had to). This looks awesome under the hood!
We were supposed to do the BlueBatmobile taillight overlays for this issue, but we're going to hold off until next time. We originally used the two-piece overlays, we're going to switch those out to the one-piece for the next issue. We may also include the Cobra Misano L seats in that issue as well. After that, we'll be installing the Injen SES straight-tip true dual exhaust system. As you can tell, we have some very exciting things coming up, and we can't wait to share it with you guys!
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