I’m replacing a hood pad on a 330GTC. The old Mylar hood pad was torn, stained, and too far gone to save. I tried to carefully pull it back from the hood, but the paper thin material would only rip and tear.

The 50 year old glue was doing a pretty good job at holding this original hood pad in place, so after taking the old hood pad off, I took some care in removing as much of the old glue from the underside of the hood.

This hood was missing a hood latch. Between the body shop, the painter, and our shop the hood latch was misplaced. I hate loosing parts, but I was lucky enough to have another GTC at my shop to copy the missing piece. I traced the dimensions of the original piece onto a piece of steel to start fabricating.

I took a look at the latch mechanism to understand what the clearances were and how much room I would need to mount the new latch and the profile I would need to make it work.

After some cutting, drilling, and heating with a torch to bend the steel into the shape of the original part, I was pretty happy with the result. There’s something truly satisfying about being able to make something from scratch, even if it’s as mundane as a hood latch!

On another 330 I have at the shop, I was replacing the starter with a high-torque unit. As I removed the old starter, I realized the heat shield was missing. This shield keeps some of the heat from the header away from the starter.

The new starter is smaller, and has more room between it and the heat of the header, but I still wanted to fabricate a new heat shield to insure the heat from the header would not affect the new starter. Done!

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