Lift A Dot Tool

Lift-A-Dot tool

(I'll add a section on full hood fitting soon!)

The Pilgrim supplied hoods and tonneaus come in kit form, the hoods themselves are fully made, but you need to fit the fasteners to the hood and body (as well as a few other jobs), this self fitting is the best approach as it allows you to get them in exactly the right position for your car…and we all know no two cars are the same.

The "lift-a-dot" fasteners are in 2 main parts, there's a bit that fixes to the body either by self tapping or rivets and the part that fits to the hood. (there are lift-a-dot and tennex fasteners but both a much the same and require the same part on the hood and use of the tool) The part that fits to the hood supposedly requires a "Lift-a-Dot" tool to do it. Myself and a friend were booked into a track day, planning on leaving Thursday morning and due to some nasty weather possibilities, we decided on the Monday afternoon that we needed to get some hoods fitted, Pilgrim were able to supply all the bits we needed from stock for both cars, but we forgot to buy/borrow the lift-a-dot tool from them. As it turns out, you really don't need the tool, just a 5" nail, a hammer and a belt punch….

The part that fits to the hood is itself in 2 parts, these parts sandwich the fabric, to fit them together you just need to make 1 round hole and 4 slits in the fabric, normally done by the tool, the hole in the middle is for the male part of the fitting attached to the car to go through, the others are for the fastener feet to go through.

Here's a fitted fastener.

fitted.JPG

Here's the male part on the bodywork:

male.JPG

Here is the nail used to make the slits, it was simply ground down to give it a 2.5mm blade at the end rather than a point. The round hole in the middle was made with a belt hole punch, but a punch could easily be made with some sharp tubing.

nail.JPG

The positions of the holes were marked by simply pressing the unfitted part into the fabric to mark the feet positions. Here's the nail in action, resting on some soft wood and paper to keep the fabric clean.

hammer.JPG

Once the holes are all made, you just push the little feet through the holes, place the other half on and bend the feet down with a gentle tap with a hammer.

topress.JPG

Using this method makes the job a little more tricky, but still only takes about 10 mins per hood to fit all the required fasteners and might save you a few pounds.

Here is the finished car with the hood up at the Silverstone Classic 2009 - another damp weekend.

hoodfitted.JPG
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