M35A3 Fiberglass Hoods

They look Okay, I have never seen a picture of the back side of the hood, or the rear of the hardtop. Because my hardtop has the slide window, I wonder if it has the window or just the hole? Or no hole.

Docuscg said:

They look Okay, I have never seen a picture of the back side of the hood, or the rear of the hardtop. Because my hardtop has the slide window, I wonder if it has the window or just the hole? Or no hole.

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He said the top has no hole for the window, but can be cut out for one. I have two pic's i found but do not know who made this hood.

steve6x6x6 said:

He said the top has no hole for the window, but can be cut out for one. I have two pic's i found but do not know who made this hood.

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Looks like the factory glass hood.

In have a nos a3 fiberglass hood complete with the two rubber hold downs and the 3 lift handles painted with the green and black carc. Whats it worth? Looking to see before i list it.

wsucougarx said:

In have a nos a3 fiberglass hood complete with the two rubber hold downs and the 3 lift handles painted with the green and black carc. Whats it worth? Looking to see before i list it.

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Do you have a pic of it?

Its looks exactly like the one in post 22.

wsucougarx said:

Its looks exactly like the one in post 22.

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OK, you need $$$ for the hood, but your in WA. and i am in FL., what would the freight be?

Good question, no idea what freight would be. If youre interested you can pm me. Haha I was just seeing how much they go for. I actually have two hoods but im holding one for a guy. If i dont hear from him then I ll sell that one as well

I have talked to Teds trucks in AL., he said $350.00, but there are a couple of different hoods. The one on my A3 is plastic with the metal strips on it. It has fallen down in the middle and looks like a bowl.

Yea -- mine too. I have to buy a hood soon and a new top. I might have to drive to pick it up if freight is to high.

steve6x6x6 said:

I have two pic's i found but do not know who made this hood.

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That's my NOS A3 hood. Got it from Brad Milne up in WA. Super well-made. Very sturdy.

When I put my NOS fiberglass hood on I had to do a little modification. If you place the hood on a flat surface, underside of the hood down, you will notice that the back of the hood is formed in a true 90 degree angle to the bottom of the hood. As we all know the hood does not sit flat on the truck but goes up hill a little in the front. So if you want a good fit you have to trim a little off the rear of the hood to make it fit evenly across the whole back of the hood.

I then found that after using the fiberglass hood a few weeks it did not wear well in the front area where it contacts the top of the grill guard. So I fabricated two small supports to position it to minimize the wear. I do not have a pic of the supports but if there is interest I can get some.

My hood was a GI issue one not a civilian MFG one.

I was planning to just screw a couple of rubber bump-stops under the front edge of my hood. Did you get more fancier than that? If so, I wouldn't mind seeing a Pic or 2.

Hi Guys,

How many of you are (still) in the market for a new production A3 composite hood? and what would be your price point?

I have the mold (mil spec) and a process to make them very similar to the military, except for the spider structure. We would use a different process for that to keep costs way down, while maintaining the strength. These won't be $500 polyester hoods (like Boyce and I think Ranchers), I can guarantee that. I don't do polyester, it's just too heavy. As Docuscg and anyone else that's worked with fiberglass knows, there are just plain heavy parts, and there are parts that are properly designed and structured for maximum strength and minimum weight.

These will be epoxy resin, vacuum bagged, and heat cycled just as the military hoods are. As of year ago I was hoping to be in the $1200-1300 price range, but I'm thinking we can come in at/under $1K if I can make several at a time so I can get the materials in bulk.

I have the mold ready to go, and a first run part out of the mold and ready for trimming. I just need some funding and some orders to get the ball rolling. I'm in Southern CO and could be persuaded to visit my family in Michigan/Indiana with a delivery of these for simply the price of my fuel, about $950 (at current prices) so if one of you is close and can take delivery of say, 10, then distribute through local pick-up and friends - Everyone could realistically wind up with close to a mil-spec for around $1100.

Sounds pretty reasonable to me if you can come close to matching the milspec quality. I see way at least $1000 in the milspec hood that I've got. Easily.

Just a thought, but there might be a bigger market for an A3 composite type hood, but made to fit A2's. Am going to make a custom grill to adapt the A3 hood to my A2, but don't see many people wanting to do something like that, and there are just way more A2's out there than A3's...

Thanks for the feedback, i posted in another thread last night about looking into the A2s and possibly the 5 tons. These would need more time than the A3s since I already have the tooling made and a good part.

I can match the quality of the mil-spec hoods, we built 10 of them for the .gov and I bought the mold. The outside surface and hole data would all remain the same. The inside "spider structure" would be what we'd change to some lighter materials and not as much resin, while still maintaining the integrity of the original part. As of now we are also looking to make the "spider" part of the part, instead of laminating it in a separate application. I don't have the numbers in front of me, but I think the inner spiders took 15 man hours each, and our proposed way would take 2-3 man hours each. That savings along with material savings is what we're hoping to be enough to bring the price point down.

Thanks again,
Peter

Oh, cool. So you actually built those hoods for the A3's. Then there's a big difference between buying parts from you vs. some guy who just ended up with the mold. Wasn't sure what the deal was.