hey all,
Figured I would share my recent disappointment with you all. Back in February I ordered a fiberglass hood. I won't mention there name but believe they are the only one's that sell a hood to fit our trucks. I ordered it with a 4 inch cowl induction. $419 plus shipping $165. They told me about 5-6 weeks. Well, during the eighth week I started calling, every day, got the same thing, "we'll have to send somebody out to the factory to check on it, or could you call back in an hour. That first Monday, they mentioned that they really wouldn't know untill it was shipped, but said they would check. I have never been put on hold for so long, so many times. The worst part is they has a 3 minute advertisement of there business for a hold message, it just plays over and over(guess who has it memorized) .By Friday they told me they couldn't tell me until they shipped it, talk about a wasted week of calling.
Okay, just over 9 weeks later, I receive the hood from land,air express. They said there not allowed to let me open the box till I sign for it, but the guy was really cool, and said he understood.
Opened the box, slight bang in the front corner, well, thats fixable, waited to long to fret about that, plus my body man is really good.
Get it home, ready to mount it, it wont fit, the cowl induction goes to far back and hits the cowl on the cab....No problem, that is to be expected with fiberglass, I suppose. I can even live with the 2 days worth of work that the hood needs because everything is so wobbly, has pinholes, and just really a general lack of quality.
After some grinding with the die grinder, get the hood fitted, WOW, really adds a great look to the truck......But wait, the passengers side top edge is 1/2 inch higher than the body cowl, and the bottom of the hood is touching the fender. My bodyman says, that it won't be so noticable when it's painted. O.K. Go to lift the hood(springs were previously removed from the hinges per earlier instructions. The hood won't lift, the whole thing just flexes and the back of the hood hits the cowl. Yikes, it takes three people to get it lifted, one on each side towards the back and one on the front. Get it lifted up, and the hood is flexing badly around where the hinges are mounted. NOW, theres the problem, I can't fix that. On top of this, they sent the hood with 1/4 inch bolts for the hood hinge mounting bolts, they are tapped out 1/4" instead of 3/8ths.
Now if anybody checks out my gallery, they should understand why I'm unhappy with this.
I call the outfit back up again, actually 5 times before I get the manager(did I mention, not one single man works here apparently, on top of this no one understands the hinge set-up on a 77 ford). They tell me to remove the springs,, I said I did, before the hood ever got here, they tell me to remove the hinge?????????What, how, what how do I suppose to lift it, spent ten minutes explaining this to them, finally she says, sir, weve sold a ton of these hoods and never had a problem, your truck mustv'e been in an accident or something. I said absolutely not. She said I'm sorry but you'll have to send a letter to the complaint department and to have a nice day, and hung up.
Now, if this was a 10 dollar item I wouldn't care so much, but it cost almost $600, thats an expensive wall ornament. Please beware of certain aftermarket parts. I'm not giving up on the hood yet, have already drilled and tapped out the mounting holes to 3/8 and am going to try another set of hinges and maybe try to find some type of spring that might work with these hinges but don't have the heavy tension of the stock springs.
Sorry so long, but was the only way to express my disappointment. For there sake they are lucky they are as far away from me as they could possibly be in the U.S. I can't even bitch face to face.
James
Maine

 

Please send me the name of the company.. privately through e-mail.

 

Done...
James

 

Knowing the name of the company would help others here watch out. Maybe a boat glasser can reinforce it for you.

 

I agree, I'd like a heads-up about whoever he's dealing with.......

 

I'd also like to know who the company is just for reference. "E" mail would work.

 

Well I guess I'm glad to have read this the only company that I know that sells that product is the same company I was going to order my 2 pc tilt front end from. I'm sorry I'm not as nice and it would be a REAL Big Deal to me.

 

Like I had said previously, they are the ONLY company that makes a cowl induction fiberglass hood for the 73-79 trucks. I was thinking about cutting the cowl induction off and molding it to a steel hood, but have been told that it is almost impossible to keep it from cracking at some point down the road. By the way, it is a real big deal, but options are limited and there probably 2800 miles away. Even if they would take it back, I would lose about $330 in shipping fees., plus alot of aggravation in trying to package it.
I'm still going to try what I had mentioned earlier and see where that takes me.
Thanks for letting me whine.
Last year I bought a TCI streetfighter tranny from Jegs, cost close to a thousand bucks. Got it, and the paint was terrible on it, so scuffed it up to repaint, found a crack in the bellhousing. Oh, no...But called Jegs up, they sent a shipping company the next day, as soon as they got it back, they sent me a new one....Excellant service, absolutely no complaints, wish all companies did business like that.
James

 

31,
Us regulars on this site know who your talking about. I've just never heard anything good or bad about them? Has anybodyelse had problems?
Could we see some pics of this problem? Are you grinding the hood down to make it fit? How thick is the material in the back of the hood? Can you lower the fender?
Curiously awaiting,
KingFisher

 

Heya James, Sorry to hear about yer frustrations. I would be pretty ticked off too! I checked out that website. Man, they look like a very big establishment. The sell a lot of different Products. It's seems as if they have hoods for an Unlimited amount of applications. This can not be the norm for their company. Have you tried contacting the Customer Service or Management? If the front door(toll free number) does not provide the resolution you are looking for then there might be a back door(local direct company number) to try. A lot of large companies have 800 numbers for the general public to get dumped/dropped into/out of. Sometimes calling the local direct line will allow you to speak to an operator or other contact to get you to someone in management. If worse comes to worse, the Better Business Bureau might want to know about your case. Maybe this is not an isolated incident?

Good Luck. If ya get it to work we'd sure love to see the pics.

 

I believe that they probably do make a good product, but don't think that they should sell a hood for these trucks. I mean really, is there another vehicle that has so much meat to there hoods, look at most chevy cars and trucks, they are almost flat in comparison to the hood on a ford truck, our hoods must be close to 6 inches high.
What really peeved me off was they said they sell a ton of these hoods to people, I'm thinking how many people are there on this website(FTE) and I have never heard of someone else having one, or seen a pic of one on another truck in the galleries or pictorials. To me that was the biggest lie, I can't imagine that they sell a ton of these hoods for our trucks. The market must be miniscule at best.
There is no way to align the back of the hood, the fender is spot on with the door, and theres just not enough meat to grind off to get it where it needs to be.
Will look into getting pics of it.
James