We follow Aldridge Trimming replacing the hood on an E-type Series 1
WORDS & PHOTOGRAPHY ROB HAWKINS
REPLACING THE fabric hood on an open-top car is in most cases a skilful job that can go horribly wrong if you don’t know what you are doing. Whilst in theory, it’s simply a matter of taking off the old material and securing the new hood in position with staples, screws and glue, there’s so much more to this, especially on an E-type Series 1, as we discovered at Aldridge Trimming.
In brief, the E-type’s hood is glued to a metal hood frame and stapled at the rear to a strip of wood (tacking strip) that’s secured to the bodywork. Typical problems that can arise include corrosion of the header rail and frame, along with the bodywork where the tacking strip is attached.
The following steps outline some of the problems and show the work involved in removing and fitting a hood, along with several repairs, which can easily take two or three days to complete.
1 Fitment of the old hood on this E-type is poor with insufficient overlap at the rear corners and poor fitment onto the hood frame, so the hood will get fouled and potentially damaged2 Lee at Aldridge Trimming starts the job by removing the rear chrome strip, which is secured with 10 screws. He fits masking tape below the outer screws to protect the paintwork3 The four hood bag brackets are removed (they are used to secure the hood bag cover when the hood is down) by undoing their small crosshead screws4 A finishing strip of material has been stapled along the rear edge of the old hood, so this is removed. Some of the staples need prising out. The back of the hood is stapled down5 Dropping the hood down, the seal along the front edge of the hood is peeled away to reveal the hood has been stapled here. Aldridge only glue the hood along this front edge6 Lee starts to prise the staples out along the front edge of the hood. These are fitted into wood, although there’s also a crosshead screw at each outer corner7 Cutting through the hood material along the front edge allows the hood to be removed more easily, although the staples still need to be extracted8 Peeling back the front of the hood reveals the hood frame and its header rail, which is fortunately in reasonable condition. Leather straps on the underside are missing9 The chrome strips fitted to the B-posts of the hood fr
