Lately, I have been shopping around for some good carbon fiber hood, possibly OEM style, for my classic silver 06 Scion tC. I have never purchased or used a carbon fiber hood before in any of the cars I have had in the past. Several of my friends told me that, since I live in New Jersey and when we do get severe weather, such as winter storms and blizzards, sometimes the CF hood tends to crack and rott the inside of the CF material itself, after you scrape off the snow on top of it. Another problem that I have heard of is that many of them have told me also that a CF hood tends to easily "spider web crack" after a simple few road debris pebble dinging it from a highway drive, for instance. I would like to know if these are completely factual or not. I have great plans with this type of application on my car and would feel at ease if this kind of investment would be sensible for a daily drivable car.

Are there any good CF hood companies or manufacturers that make a durable and long lasting CF hood for a tC?
Would highly appreciate any comments or advise from any of you. Thanks again!

 

well, i live in socal, so no weather like that where i have to wipe off snow or anything like that. ive had my hood for over 6 months and am constantly on the freeway and i havent seen any spider web cracks on mine yet. so theyre pretty durable if you ask me.

 

Well as for the snow I have never heard of that before. I am sure you can cause damage to the hood if you use an ice scraper to it.

As for the crackign and such from impact, I am sure that could be possible. I am on mythird CF hood now and have not run into any issues like you are mentioning.

One thing that sets my hood apart from the rest is that I have a Full HOOD clear bra on it to prevent fading of the CF and chipping from rocks.

I would recommend VIS for a CF hood IMHO.

Good luck

 

does road blocker offer a full kit for the hood? My C/F hood should be here in a week then its off to get a good clear coat. I thought about doin this but havent seen and full covering kits.

 

You CF hood isnt clear coated already??

Yes, I offer full hood wraps for $250

 

Yeah but I want better quality. I'll be in touch about the hood wrap.

 

my friend has a celica w/ a VIS carbon fiber hood. he lives in pennsylvania (which gets a fair amount of snow..) and he hasn't had any cracks in it in the past three years. it still looks brand new.

 

yea, i have never heard of any of these problems. just make sure theres a nice thick coat of wax on the CF hood and hopefully that will take care of the little debris you are worried about

 

One thing that shold be mentioned is sun fade. CF fades really fast that isjust another reason why I have a full hood wrap

 

when u have a CF hood, you should also wax it alot. doing this builds up protection fron the sun (kind of like rock blockers wrap).

racingsolution.com also has a very nice CF hood

 

Rockblocker can cover how much of the entire car?

 

starts at $4G and goes up from there

 

Rockblocker is great. I have it on my headlights and my bumper. Great product ones its installed you dont know that its there unless you look very closely and feel it. Great protection as well seems to be very high quality. Iam getting a cf hood as well in the summer and definitly plan on wraping it in rockblocker.

As for the problems you have that happens to any type of surface when you dont take care of it. As long as you wash and wax your c f hood on reg bases youll be fine. Any cf material is always slightly weaker then any stock hood. Itll fade faster and chip easier. Take extra care of it and youll be fine.

 

Curious here, how does the rockblocker hood wrap protect the hood from sun fade?

 

yeah I have been scratching my head about this too

 

Not sure but I beleive the same a clear coat does for your paint. It blocks uv rays.

 

Thats easy the UV Inhibitors in the film and the clear coated surface will all but stop fading of the CF hood. Last year we put my old car to the test and covered half the hood with and half without.

Washed all the time. Waxed weekly. Took about 3 months in the sun and the area that wasnt covered started to fade and turn color.

 

wow really . i would love to see a pic of that!

 

same here