HD hood help

CSX, thank you for such an informative and helpful first post. I'm new here myself, but welcome to the forums!

Thank you for clarifying the fender to hood (non)-issue when all parts are genuine OEM.

I look forward to your pics.. Hopefully, you can take mid-progress pics, especially of the underside of the hood BEFORE the paint covers the hard work.

Thanks again, Chris!
 
I Know how the process was done for my hood, however my body man does ALL my body work, So i cannot give you an exact on the process. For the cutting for the headlights they made a template, and made it longer then it needed to be. Then rolled the lip , seam sealed, and painted. Both mine are done the exact same

To fix the grille issue I shimmed the Top bolt of the grille to kick it out a good half inch. This made the grille sit nicely.


These pics are probably 7 years old easy
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You cna see my grille-hood fitment there

And I had a brain fart...the hood on the rcsb is OEM, I got it from a rear hit 2001 hd Black locally...I fudged
 
Brandon, thank you.

Once again, the pictures of the underside of your hood look fantastic. I have saved them all. So far, I've collected about 45 images of HD Hoods "in progress" in some stage or another.

It is quite interesting to look at and compare the hood conversions in progress, without being dazzled or distracted by the overall completed look of the truck. There is a great bit of variation in how the headlight cuts are accomplished, with an equally varying degree of precision.

It appears easy to make it look "close", but quite a trick to make it look absolutely "correct."
 
So I posted a bunch of pictures last night, and my posts have disappeared come daybreak. Weird.

In any event, I wasn't able to get pictures of the hood while it was still in progress - best I could do was a few shots of the hood off the truck, with closeups of the backsides of the seams. See below.

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And here are a few shots with the hood installed. I don't have any clearance issues at all, and although the fender-to-hood gap isn't quite as streamlined as the OEM GMC hood, there's such variation in the way all these trucks' frontends fit that few people would be the wiser. I'll get more underhood and fender gap shots later today.

Also note the fender-to-hood fitment on the profile shots; I mentioned previously that (at least on the '03+ style frontends) that the front edge of the hood will not come to the front edge of the grille like the factory hood will. The effect is subdued on my truck since I had the grille/headlight surrounds color-matched, but may be slightly more noticeable on the factory chrome.

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These are a tad bit washed out (bright sunlight and two light-colored houses will do that, but here you can see how the rear fender gap is; again, this is an OEM Chevy HD hood with OEM GMC fenders. The passenger side isn't bad, the driver side is close, but no amount of slamming the hood brings about contact on either side. No modification was made to the fenders or hood in the areas pictured here.

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CSX...

Very nice. Thank you very much for posting your pictures (twice, no less). Your pictures really help illustrate some details... like the gap between the fender and hood that can get close at the elbow of the bend, not just edge corners.

You know you did a good job when you got Brandon Gray's approval. Your's is the first I've heard him compliment from seeing the underside.

Thanks again for taking the time out to post pictures!
 
bgray said:
Your hood looks very nice, job well done

Also really digging your front end, cant wait to remove my wrap and colormatch my truck.
Click to expand...

Thank you very much :)

I was a little hesitant since I couldn't find pictures anywhere online of someone that had done a colormatched front end on a Spiral Gray truck, I feared it would be too dark, but the mesh grilles really gave me just the right amount of brightwork. I also have clear parking lights and cleared OEM Denali headlights (what a PITA that job was) ready to go on as soon as my LED bulbs come in.

I also went so far as to colormatch the mirrors, door handles, tailgate handle, and rear bumper...but those are pictures for a different thread.
 
CSX said:
So I posted a bunch of pictures last night, and my posts have disappeared come daybreak. Weird.

In any event, I wasn't able to get pictures of the hood while it was still in progress - best I could do was a few shots of the hood off the truck, with closeups of the backsides of the seams. See below.

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Click to expand...

Definitely some badass quality body work on that hood. not a fan of your grille, and need some different lights, but the sprial grey colormatch is perfect.
 
Update for everyone (and posterity):

Went to install my cleared OEM Denali headlights today, and had some small fitment issues that I figured would be worth posting up about in case anyone else wants to combine the HD hood with Denali headlights.

The Denali housings are lightly larger than the stock units, and here's the first problem I had - there are four small metal "clamps" around the headlight, one of which came into direct contact with my hood when I tried to close it. Here's a couple pictures of what I'm talking about; note that it's half-covered in RTV silicone since I had to re-seal my housings after opening them to remove the orange reflector.

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I figured, simple enough, a quick bend and it's out. But there's more - the Denali headlights have extra plastic where the clamps are that protrude past where the edge of the headlight normally are on the stock headlights, shown here:

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So I broke out the dremel, and this is what I ended up after a few seconds with the sanding wheel:

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Here are a couple close-up shots to show the fitment of the Denali headlights - mine are super close, I believe that the lip of the hood actually every-so-slightly rests on the top edge of the headlights when closed. In retrospect, what I should have done was install the Denali lights prior to taking my truck into the shop to have the hood fitted, that way they could have accounted for the larger housing. However, I've made it a point to open and close the hood several times and can't see any obvious signs of rubbing or damage to either the headlight or the hood.

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And lastly, here are some shots of the finished frontend, with Denali headlights and clear corners that I got off eBay:

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How did you get the headlights open?

From this pic you can see the hood is a hair lower than the fender.

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I'd just raise the rubber bumper to match the fender and you shouldn't have any issue with the hood hitting the lights.
 
I've been following this thread, but haven't posted yet.

Anyways, while I've been working on cutting my hood, I used my denali headlights to make sure there's enough clearance, because it ended up resting on that seam just like CSX's hood. Then I put my stock lights in to make sure I got the final curve right. My hoos still isn't done because It's taken me so many times of trimming and fitting to make it work with the denali lights.
 
BOO5TED said:
How did you get the headlights open?

From this pic you can see the hood is a hair lower than the fender.

I'd just raise the rubber bumper to match the fender and you shouldn't have any issue with the hood hitting the lights.
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I found several threads on clearing headlights, but the methods used were quite destructive, like this write-up:

How to clear NBS Denali headlights. - Chevy Truck Forum | GMC Truck Forum - GmFullsize.com

Since I'm kind of anal-retentive and didn't to take a dremel to my brand new headlights, what I did was set my heatgun to the highest setting (1000 deg F), and keeping it a safe enough distance away from the headlight, heated the edge of the housings for a solid 6-8 minutes, constantly moving so as not to melt anything. Then, using a medium-sized flat-tip screwdriver, started to pry on the reflector end of the headlight, pushing the front lens away from the back side of the headlight housing. Don't rush, the lens will eventually give, you may have to fire up the heatgun a few more times. You'll want to take your time as to prevent exerting too much pressure on the housing and breaking something.

Eventually, the lens will pop off, and you'll have a gray adhesive gasket left that you'll need to pull off. Easiest way to do this is to re-heat it to soften it and pull it off slowly so it comes off in as close to one piece as possible.

Once you've got the headlight open, all you need to do is give the reflector a quick tug and it'll come right off. Apply a bead of RTV silicone to the edge of the housing, put the lens back on, and either put something heavy on it or use some quick-clamps to keep pressure on the seal, then let it set for 24 hours.

As for the rubber hood bumpers, some amount of adjustment helped with the contact issue, but raising them too high definitely threw off the alignment of the front portion of the hood with respect to the fenders (when viewed from the sides).
 
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