Hi,
I am painting SS stripes on my car and which is a malibu convertible with the stock flat hood. I can't afford to buy an SS hood for a while so it'll have to do. I got my stripe kit from OPGI and it looks like the kit was designed for hoods with the SS bulge. Is there a way to make it work on a flat hood such as trimming the stencil or something like that? any advice would be much appreciated!

I would say not to mess up your stencil. I would Freehand the stripes. Find someone with a ss hood already striped, take measurements of stripe width at leading and trailing edge of the hood. take measurements off the certerline of the hood as the stripes run parallel to the centerline. Get yourself some 1/4" wide pinstripe tape and lay the stripe out. Don't worry about being perfect on the first coat. After you get the ough stripes on the solid hood, color sand the area smooth. Then use the pinstripping to define the lines of the stripe to perfection and spray the body color with the stripes masked off. Remove masking scuff and put on 3 coats of clear. Wet sand, and buff to a glorious shine.

Regards,

If your up for buying new stencils when a cowl hood becomes available, you can use the front ones(front of the hood), they are the same regardless, and they would be the most difficult to fabricate and make look correct. Then, you could measure the width of the rear, and make your own. The "inside stripe" on an SS hood is straight, so you'll have somthing to measure from. There are several close of pics of my hood on my webshots page, just click the link in the signature. Good luck! graemlins/thumbsup.gif