Tight new hood - normal?

Greetings all

I'm most of the way through replacing my old, tattered, leaky hood with a brand new shiny black vinyl one.

The new hood is now screwed on at the front, and wedged in at the back under the rear cable, but getting the hood closed has so far proved impossible - the new hood is too tight!

I'm hoping a few hot days will allow it to stretch, but has anyone else come across this?

AliCabrio

Take care Ali

Ours was a little tight due to the vinyl being new, but not so tight that you couldn't close it!

Someone else on here had one rip if I remember rightly, so don't force it.  8O

Ross can probably help you find where the problem is.

When I changed mine last week it was very tight before cutting the X for the rear window it was like a drum skin.
As soon as that X was cut it was fine and closed just like the old one.

That's really helpful, thanks.

What did you (all of you) use to staple down the cover around the rear window frame?

I've tried two manual staplers and a (cheap) electric one, and none of them are 100% effective at getting staples into the frame. In fact at best only about one in five goes in properly.

AliCabrio

I used a heavy duty stanley stapler from B&Q with one of the shorter length staples.
The longer staples had trouble going all the way in.

Think it was ?15 or ?20 for the stapler and ?3 or ?4 for 1000 staples.

I used a really cheep stapler that my parents had lying around. I wouldnt be surprised it it came from Lidl! It seemed to work on anyway! It had a metal body of course though.

Have you cut the rear window hole yet? THis months Practical Classics mag covers fitting hoods. They said that cutting the hole releaves a load of tension. I didn't really have any in mine though.

Thanks Ross and Nordoff

I picked up a cheap (?10) electric staple gun off the local market, which seemed a big improvement on the hand staple guns (cheap wilkinson/Rolson versions) but I only had 12mm staples - these of course did not go in very far.

I've now got some 6mm. Looking good.

Now I only have to fix the broken locking handle - a second-hand replacement is on the expensive sid of ?80!

AliCabrio