[rhocking1]

CVR Motorsports (cvrmotorsports.com) = Seibon OEM Hood
Grade A: Bought the hood for $518 (shipped) from CVR Motorsports. Couldn’t go wrong with this price and shipped as well. I confirmed with Seibon that CVR is a Seibon vendor and since the hood was shipped direct from Seibon with all the Seibon wrapping no problem there. Seibon gets an A for the packaging they have little wood pieces bolted to the spot where the hood bolts up and these protect the corners of the hood (very well done).

BAX Global = Shipping Co.
Grade C: The shipping was a pain. BAX global the shipping company doesn't have a expected date for delivery on their package tracking website. I ended up calling multiple times, they told me the hood would be delivered on a specific day and it didn't arrive. They made all kinds of excuses and got it to me a couple of days later. It was a pain because I had to be home twice. The package arrived with a slight scuff and a dent in the corner but since Seibon packed the hood so well there was no damage to the hood.

1st Subaru Parts (1stsubaruparts.com) = Parts for install
Grade B: I bought here because they were slightly cheaper than genuinesubaruparts.com. I wanted to make it easy to switch hoods. Rather than moving the weather stripping and connectors from the original hood to the new hood I figured for a few bucks more I would get the parts and put them on the CF hood so all it really takes is bolting it up, moving the splitter under the scoop and moving the latch. I ordered weather stripping 2 pieces. 7 white grommets for screwing the splitter to. 1 black grommet for the center screw on the splitter. 3 clips for holding the windshield washer nozzle hosing AND a whole bunch of clips for the weather stripping. It took 3 weeks for the parts to arrive. Maybe it's my fault for not doing enough research but it turns out the weather stripping has the clips already attached so I didn't need the 30 or so clips that were already included. The reason for the grade-B is that I thought it would have been nice for 1st Subaru to call and tell me I ordered 30 or so clips that were already included. Not a big deal since the clips were cheap, but it would have been nice.

Ebay (Grade-A) = Windshield Washer Nozzles
The OEM windshield washer nozzles were way expensive. I considered getting some really cheap LED nozzles and painting them black but ended up seeing 3-way universal nozzles on Ebay. Vendor = K2 Motor. Got these for $9 (and $9 shipping, ouch). They fit on easily, were half the price of the OEM and look much better than a painted LED nozzle. I bought some 5/32 washer hose at Pep Boys to hook them up rather than reusing the hose from the original hood. Again, this went with my approach of not transferring parts from old hood to CF hood and making it an easy bolt on replacement so I can switch hoods whenever. I also bought a 3 x 3/16 plastic 'Y' from Pep boys to hook the two nozzles to, and the other end to the water hose in the car.

Car Domain (cardomain.com) = Hood Pins
Grade A: You could call Hood Pins ricer. I wanted to put them on for the extra safety. It may be a bit anal but it's cheap insurance. I don’t think they are ricer since they serve a function. Anyway I got a set of Sparco Silver Hood pins ($28.95 shipping free) from Car Domain.

Seibon
Grade A: The quality of the hood is excellent. I couldn’t find any blemishes. The weave is straight. I'm very happy with the look/quality. It has a good looking clear coat which should give good UV protection. Most of the spots that need to be drilled for weather stripping clips and grommets have slight indentations so it's easy to figure out where to drill.
Fitment 99 out of 100. Only because I am anal, nobody else would notice but the hood is slightly higher, about 1 mm, on one side than the other. With the hood pins correctly fitted you don’t notice since I set them to push down on the hood slightly. FYI it seems like the hood needs time to settle after bolting it up. In the first few hours after bolting on the hood it sat very slightly higher on the one side. When I came back the next day it had settled and was pretty much perfect. I was very concerned about fitment with stories about after market hoods. I couldn’t be more pleased. Like I said I can be a bit anal, but this Seibon hood fits great.

[rhocking1]

The Install. First 'prep' the hood.

Remember my approach was to not move parts from the original hood. I wanted to be able to more easily switch back to the original hood.

- Put down a drop cloth and get 4 firm pillows and put them down. Place the hood upside down on the pillows. The pillows mean you aren’t resting the hood scoop on the ground. This way you can work on the underside of the hood without fear of scratches.

- There are 7 silver screws holding the splitter under the hood scoop and one black screw in the middle top. These screws are screwed into white square plastic grommets and in the case of the black screw a black round grommet. Drill pilot holes (there are small indentations on the hood skeleton already) for the square grommets. I then used a dremel to square off the holes and pushed the square grommets into place. One or two were a tight squeeze (could have dremeled some more off One was a little loose so I dabbed a bit of glue on the grommet.
WARNING: When drilling the holes make sure you don’t drill too far and go through to the hood. It's not too tough. BUT BE CAREFUL!!! I also recommend wearing a mask to avoid breathing fiberglass/carbon particles and wearing thin gloves to avoid splinters (I'm told they can be painful).

- For the black center screw grommet, drill a slightly bigger hole (not square into which to push the grommet.

- There are little indentations/marks on the hood where to drill but I lay the weather stripping down in place just to be sure I was drilling in the right place. I also didn’t want to mess anything up so I used the dremel to drill pilot holes first. Drill pilot holes for each clip (there are a lot of holes.

- Pop out one of the clips from the weather-stripping on the current hood. Go through your drill bits figuring out which one is the right size by inserting it in the hole on the metal hood. I forgot which size I used (sorry). Drill out the pilot holes to the correct size.

- Put the weather stripping in place and connect with the clips. It's easy.

- Drill 3 pilot holes for the windshield washer nozzle clips. Then drill those holes out so you can push in the windshield washer clips.

- Attach the windshield washer nozzles. Holes are already pre-drilled. Pop them through the holes and screw the nut that holds the nozzles in place down. Snug it tight, but not too tight. No drilling needed.
At the end of all this you should have a CF hood with weather stripping attached and grommets in place.

- Unhook the windshield washer nozzle hoses from the 'Y'. I chose to put new hose and a new 'Y' on to make the swap easy so I disconnected from the water (rather than nozzle) side of the 'Y'.

- On the hood that is currently on the car, place some cardboard over the intercooler (I don’t want to bend a fin. Put a blanket over the engine (it should be cool). This way if you drop a screw you don’t lose it. Undo the 7 silver screws holding the splitter in place. Undo the black center screw. Drop the splitter down.

- If you desire markup the old hood so you know how it aligned with the hinges.

- With a friend on each side supporting the old hood, unbolt the hood from the hinge. Hinge remains bolted to car. 2 bolts on each side. If I recall these were 12mm bolts.

- Lift old hood off of car and set aside.

- Unbolt protective wood pieces from Seibon hood. Bolt Seibon hood onto the hinges. I had to push very slightly inward on the hinges to get the holes to line up. I reused the bolts that were holding the old hood in place. Tighten up the bolts. Don't tighten them like you’re the gorilla at the Wal Mart auto shop.

- Lift the hood splitter back up into place and reuse the 7 silver screws to screw the splitter into place in the grommets you previously installed. Wasn't that easy. Now finish up the splitter by screwing the center black screw into place.

- Unbolt the latch (2 x 12mm bolts) from the old hood and transfer to the Seibon hood. Reuse the same bolts.

- Hook your 5/32 windshield washer hose up to the nozzles you pre-installed. Hook the hose in the hose clips you pre-installed so it holds in place all nice and neat. Finally hook up the non-nozzle end of the hose to the 'Y' you bought for a buck or so and hook the other end of the 'Y' to the water side hose so everything's all plumbed in. It's a bit of a tight push to get the hose on because the 'Y' I bought was 3/16 and the hose was 5/32. Not too hard, but I'm pretty sure it won't pop off by accident.

- Take your blanket and protective cardboard off your intercooler.

- Shut your hood. Mine closed and fit absolutely perfect first time. I don’t think this was an accident. The Seibon quality seems such that you can expect an excellent fit pretty much out of the box.

[rhocking1]

Hood Pin Install

There are already some holes drilled in the radiator support. The one on the left hand side of the car had a nut welded on the underside (not sure what for). Since there were two perfectly matched holes I decided to reuse them. It was nice to be able to reuse holes that were already essentially drilled with perfectly lined up pilot holes by the factory. It took a bit of time to drill out the holes a little bigger so that the Sparco 'post' bolt would fit. Obviously the one with the nut took a little more time to drill out. I also had to cut an inch and a half or so off the bolt to get the post to sit low enough as I adjusted the posts to be the correct height. After lightly tightening the nuts and putting the posts in place I dabbed a bit of paint on top of the post and closed the hood. This transferred paint to the underside of the hood to show me exactly where to drill through the hood. First I had to drill through the skeleton. Then fresh dabs of paint and drill through the hood itself (the scary bit).

I really like the way the WRC cars line up the Sparco pins with the line of the headlights rather than vertically along the hood. I decided to do the same thing. Place the pin fitment on the hood and line it up the way you like. I put a little wax on first for extra protection. I used a little bit of masking tape to hold the pin fitment in place. Then I did a little bit of fine tuning/adjustment on the posts to get them pretty much the right height but I didn't really snug the bolts too tight. I then drilled small pilot holes for the screws that hold the pin on the hood and screwed the pins into place on top of the hood. I then did final adjustment to the posts. Since I had already got them pretty close this was just fine tuning. Finally tightened the post bolts down nice and tight so the posts are good and solidly attached to the radiator/headlight support beam.

Finally, all done. I would say that this doesn’t really require a huge amount of technical ability and know how. Somewhat time consuming, especially if you are anal like me about drilling pilot holes before drilling, or dremeling, the holes out to the right size. But all in all rewarding and probably saves enough money for some small performance mods.


Haven't had a chance to take pics of the installed hood, but will post some pics as soon as I get the chance.

[rhocking1]

Will put some pics here as soon as I get the chance.

[La Mer]

So this won't work for a 2006? Why don't you add that to the title?

[rhocking1]

Will probably work for almost any hood install. It just happened my car was an 07. The 06 is definitely the same. Main thing that would be different for earlier cars would be the hood pin bit of the install. I don;t know if the earlier models have the pre-drilled holes from the factory. Title updated.

[importmike]

Pictures would be nice!

Also do you really need to put all the weather stripping on? Other than the hood pins, the only drilling you did was for the weather stripping correct?

[rhocking1]

Had to drill and dremel holes for the grommets for the splitter under the hood scoop. Holes for the weather stripping. Holes for the hood pins. Only the hood pin holes were drilled in the portion of the hood that is visible. The other holes are in the underside skeleton.

[importmike]

Bah.. thought cf hoods were one of the quickest installs.. apparently not.

Guess I'll have to drill into that pretty cf =/

[bwoosti]

post some pics!!!

[RAPTR]

What are guys doing for the air splitter on the CW-IIs? The under skeleton is totally different than the oem cf hood.

[importmike]

I don't use the skeleton on my Seibon cf hood.