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GT500 Style Hood; Carbon Fiber (18-23 Mustang GT, EcoBoost)

Item 408531
AmericanMuscle no longer carries the GT500 Style Hood; Carbon Fiber (18-23 Mustang GT, EcoBoost). Please check out 1979-1993 Foxbody Mustang Hoods for an updated selection.
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    Product Videos

    Hey, guys, Adam here with americanmuscle.com. And today we're taking a quick look at installing the GT500 Carbon Fiber Hood, available for the 2018 and newer GT and EcoBoost Mustang. As you can see guys, you should be checking this out if you're looking for the oh, so aggressive and beautiful looking GT500 Style Hood in a very unique carbon fiber finish. Now, there are a lot of aftermarket hoods out there in the category, not all of which includes such a luxurious material as carbon fiber that you see on a lot of luxury or super cars nowadays, especially something you see on some of the newer vehicles like the GT350R and GT500.This is going to give you that GT500 styling. It's got the dual air inlet to help keep intake temperatures down. It's also got the dual air heat extractors on the top end, similar to that of the Shelby styling. Now, the big change up here is the materials. It's a beautiful, full true carbon fiber finish at the top end with an extremely high gloss and UV resistant finish on top of that. Something that has an incredible polish to it, reflects light immaculately, and has a perfect weave on top. Underneath of that, it is just a fiberglass matte black bare material finish. It looks still pretty good under the hood, but it's not completely finished like the top end. Not a positive or negative, just something worth mentioning there.And like I said, not only are you keeping the intake temps down with the intake at the front end but you're also going to kick all that heat out, all the hot engine bay heat that you don't want trapped under the hood by kicking it out back there. This hood here has a perfect fitment side to side and on the nose there for your '18 and newer GT or EcoBoost, but it won't be available or fit on any of the newer GT500 or GT350 Style Mustangs. Now, the price tag for this is going to be on the more premium side compared to some of the alternative options in the category, just because of the sheer fact that it is pure carbon fiber, and it has an extremely lightweight characteristic to it. The price tag for this comes in right around 1,750 bucks.Now, that is finished right out of the box. You don't have to worry about painting it, no scuffs, no priming, none of that nonsense. It's good to go right out of the box, which is a big bonus, but it does carry a slightly higher price stag. We did throw this guy on a scale and compared it to our factory hood, which we'll take a closer look at side by side later on. But no, if you're in the market for a weight saving hood, this is going to be a great way to go. This is going to shed 10 and a half pounds compared to your factory hood. Factory hood weighs in at 40 pounds. This one comes in at 29 and a half.Great for guys looking to shed every 10th of a second that they can off their quarter-mile by dropping some front-end weight. The install for this I'm going to give three out of three wrenches on our difficulty meter, simply because it is a body part, something that can be pretty difficult to install, especially by yourself in the driveway at home. For all body panels, we do recommend professional installation, unless you have professional experience on deck to get it done in your driveway. Something is worth mentioning here is that it does not come with pre-drilled holes on the underside to transfer over your factory washer fluid nozzles, your weatherstripping, or your heat shield underneath of your factory hood.The heat shield from the factory hood has a different shape and doesn't translate to this guy but you could always pick up an aftermarket option that fits the GT500 to match with this styling. As for your washer nozzles, I recommend picking up a relocation kit, which you can pick up sold separately, which can help relocate that to the factory cowl instead of it being on your hood. Otherwise, you would have to do some custom drilling to make that work. Same thing goes for the weatherstripping.Finally, this is not going to be reusing your factory hood prop. I'd recommend picking up some aftermarket hood struts, which can make life a little easier. Otherwise, again, you'll have to do some drilling yourself to get that hole to work properly. With that said, guys, the install is going to take you about two hours from start to finish. I definitely recommend having a helping hand on deck. The hood is just naturally too big to get done by yourself. And, of course, you don't want to cause any damage to your factory paint on your fenders. With that said, I'm going to show you what the process looks like with the exception of custom drilling. We're just going to be installing this. Let's get started.Tools used in the install include an impact gun, a quarter-inch rachet, a couple of 10-millimeter deep sockets, and a panel removal tool. First things first guys, pop your hood, of course. We're going to start by disconnecting some of our pushpin clips holding on our heat shield underneath the bottom of the hood here, just to access our washer fluid lines that we need to disconnect also. Grab a panel removal tool. I'm going to start by removing this Christmas tree clip just so we get a little bit better access, that just pops right off, just like that. And now this can flop open a little bit easier. From here you're going to lift up on the heat shield to expose the T fitting that connects it to the washer fluid nozzle. You're basically just going to pull this guy straight back.All right, so that's disconnected. We're going to free this guy right out. Same thing on the other side. Next, I'm going to remove the two pins in the middle because the washer fluid lines still have to be removed and there's a couple of pins on the inside there that we need access to. So let's pop this guy off as well. Under there you can see there's one here and then we'll have to repeat that on the other side as well. Grab the panel tool and I'll pop this off. There's just one little clip here on our passenger side by our hood hinges, so just pop that guy off as well. Now, that entire line is free and we can start working on our hood.Next, the objective is to loosen up both 10-millimeter nuts holding the hood to the hood hinges. We're not completely removing these nuts at all. We're just going to be loosening them up so that we can loosen them up by hand. We're going to keep them on to hold that hood in place. Repeat on the other side. And then with a helping hand of a friend, we can both tackle it with our fingers there. All right. So that's loose enough to get with your hand. Same thing on the bottom. Repeat that on the other side.Now you can grab a helping hand, one person on each side, support the bottom of the hood. Remove those 10 millimeters now that they're just hand tight and we can pop the hood off. Got my buddy, Joel, on the other side. I'm going to start here by taking our hood prop down. So that's not a factor. Support the top side of the hood and now you can start removing this. Carefully take your hood and set it aside. So we got our factory hood off of our '19 GT and it's on the ground next to our GT500 option, the carbon fiber version. And I want to show you guys some similarities and differences between the two. And I got to say from head to toe, this is completely different.Let's start with the most obvious construction. Your factory hood is more of a fiberglass construction, of course, and it's got the paint match color. In our case, it's that lightning blue. The new option here is a carbon fiber, and that's a visible carbon fiber weave. The top side is a two by two twill carbon fiber, true carbon fiber weave. And it's got a pure gloss finish on top that is also UV resistant. So it's not going to fade over time in the sun. That gloss finish is super glossy. It's something that I consider a work of art. The weave itself is completely flawless. It really looks perfect on this color and, really, it'll match any color that comes off the factory line or even custom colors if you've gone that far.Now aside from that, carbon fiber is known to be an extremely lightweight material. It's for the guys out there who are looking to shed some weight. As a matter of fact, we put both of these hoods on a scale to see the comparison. We first started with a couple of woodblocks just to boost it up in height so we could see the scale a little better, zeroed out the weight, and then added our factory hood. The factory hood weighed in at 40 pounds exactly. We then swapped over the GT500 style hood. Of course, you're out the weight, and it weighed in at 29 and a half pounds, 10 and a half pounds lighter than the factory hood.Now to some people 10 and a half pounds might not sound like a lot, but if you're interested in shedding time off the quarter-mile, every pound can count and every 10th of a second can count, and we all know weight does make a difference. So if that's the route you're looking to take with hoods, this is a great option to shed some of that weight, 10 and a half pounds to be exact. Now, this style hood is obviously very reminiscent, if not identical to the Shelby GT500 style hood. It's got the air inlet to pull in cooler air at the front end and help keep intake temperatures down, which we know can translate to a better power gain. And, of course, it's got the heat extraction on the back, which is a lot more impactful than our factory GT heat extractors.Those guys there are super small, not as impactful. These are a lot longer, take up a lot more surface area. They've got a mesh insert underneath. The whole striping across the top there is also that carbon fiber finish. So it continues with that weave and it's going to help push all the hot engine bay heat out while it's pulling all the cool air in from the front. So that's got a lot of functionality to it, not just design and weight aspects. Finally, the last thing I want to talk about is fitment. Now, the fitment is going to be almost identical to the factory. We do know however that aftermarket body parts may have some slight differences in body gaps compared to complete OEM parts.That's just the nature of an aftermarket body panel, but overall, it's got a really good fitment. It's going to work with the factory hood hinges and we are going to be able to transfer over our hood striker pin from the front-end there to make sure it latches properly. One thing to note from [inaudible 00:09:47] composites is that this does require the use of hood pins. It is a completely different weight ratio than the factory hood, so just the singular hood latch at the front-end may not be enough to hold that guy down, especially at higher speeds, in which case, hood pins would do the trick, which are sold separately.In terms of transferring over some factory components, like I said, you can transfer that striker pin over, which I'll show you guys in just a minute. But as far as the washer fluid nozzles, there are not pre-drilled holes on the new hood here. So I do recommend picking up a washer nozzle relocation kit to relocate those nozzles over to the cowl section of underneath that engine bay or that front section under the windshield. You can do a little bit of a custom job drilling out and squaring the holes to fit your washer nozzles. In here we won't be doing that. That is a very custom job that you want to have some experience with or take to a professional to get done properly.There's also not pre-drilled holes for your underhood heat shield or the weatherstripping. So, again, those would be custom jobs. The underhood heat shield doesn't really match up to the GT500 style but you could pick up the GT500 underhood heat shield if you want it to off of that OEM Ford lineup. With all that said, we're going to transfer over the striker pin at the front and then get over to the install. So next we're looking at the underside of both hoods here. We're going to transfer over the striker pin here for the hood latch by taking off the two factory 10-millimeter nuts. You could reuse these, but remember they are paint-matched to your factory paint color. There are new bolts included in the kit for the new hood that you don't have to worry about seeing that paint match underside.So what we're going to do is take these off and use the new ones, grab your 10 socket and get both of them off. Now, when you take them off, you want to make sure you're keeping it in the same orientation. You don't want to flip it around because it only fits on one way. Just like that. Just as you took it off, you're going to drop it on the new studs just like that. There are two 10-millimeter nuts already included there on the studs that you just take off prior. You put them right on top. Now you can tighten this down with your 10 socket. Now we can install the hood with a helping hand of a friend. Now, with the helping hand of a friend, let's get this guy in place and use our factory nuts to tighten it down.Full disclosure, guys. We have the hood installed but, of course, the new hood, because it doesn't have any pre-drilled holes, there's no hole here for the hood prop. Just temporarily we're using the hood prop on the inside here just to hold the hood up in place while we tighten down our hood hinge bolts. This is not the proper way that this is supposed to be used. You should not do this long-term or consistently. This is just something we're doing to get the hood installed. I recommend picking up some hood struts or you can, again, custom drill that hole out in order to use your hood prop in its factory location.The idea here is just to get the nuts a little snug. We'll have to do some trial and error testing for fitment. We don't want to over-tighten it too much just yet. Repeat on the other side. All right. Now we can carefully test fit it by dropping the hood down, and then we'll be able to line it up from there. When you drop this, just carefully bring it down. Keep an eye on both sides. If you see it overlap the fender at all, that will cause damage to your factory fender. So you just want to be very cautious when doing that. Ours actually looks like it lines up pretty good. You want to make sure it comes down far enough to latch. Ours, you heard the click.From there, I like the fitment. Let's tighten down our bolts all the way and we'll be good to go. Keep in mind this is carbon fiber so you don't want to over-torque these nuts and crack the carbon fiber. So you just get them nice and snug so that it won't move. Do the same thing on the other side. Once that's tight, you're good to go. That's going to wrap up my review and install for the GT500 Style Carbon Fiber Hood, available for the '18 and newer GT and EcoBoost Mustang. Again, a perfect option for guys looking to shed weight, get a super aggressive exterior appearance with a really unique full carbon fiber weave. You can get yours right here at americanmuscle.com.

    Product Information

    Features, Description, Reviews, Q&A, Specs & Installation

    Features

    • GT500 Style Hood
    • Functional Heat Extractor
    • Lightweight Carbon Fiber Construction
    • High-Quality 2 x 2 Twill Carbon Fiber Weave
    • Premium Gloss, UV Protectant Finish
    • Direct Fit, Bolt-on Replacement
    • Hood Pins Needed for Installation; Sold Separately
    • Fits 2018-2023 GT and EcoBoost Models

    Description

    GT500 Styling. Add the aggressive styling of the mighty serpent to your own 2018-2023 Mustang with a Carbon Fiber GT500 Style Hood. This Hood mimics the clean powerful lines of the Shelby GT500 perfectly, making it the ideal appearance upgrade for any 2018-2023 EcoBoost or GT Mustang.

    Functional Heat Extractor. With a large center heat extractor vent, not only does this GT500 Hood look bold and aggressive, but it will also improve air flow into the engine compartment. The center louvered vent will allow hot air to easily escape from the engine bay keeping under hood temperatures in check.

    Carbon Fiber Construction. Featuring a high-quality, carbon fiber build, this GT500 Style Hood has the strength to endure the elements without compromising the weight of your vehicle. Plus, it comes with a premium gloss, UV protectant finish to maintain its attractive appearance.

    Application. This GT500 Style Hood; Carbon Fiber is designed to fit 2018-2023 GT and EcoBoost models. Not compatible with Shelby GT350 or GT500 models. Hood Pins required for installation - sold separately.

    CA Residents: WARNING: Cancer and Reproductive Harm - www.P65Warnings.ca.gov

    Installation & What's in the Box

    Installation Info

    What's in the Box

    • (1) GT500 Style Hood
    3.5

    Customer Reviews (2)

      Reviews of similar Exterior products have an average rating of 4.3 out of 5

        Questions & Answers

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