When I bought the carbon fiber hood in 2016, it was in perfect condition from another Dart owner in Wisconsin. I drove the hood home and installed it, and one week later showed up to Midwest Chicago, only to find a large crack in the front of the hood.

I later added hood pins, but the damage was already done. I had it sanded and re-clear-coated, however, the damage went down into the carbon fiber fabric and couldn’t be fully eliminated.

I came up with an idea to cover the damage, and to make the car look a bit cooler, even though it is a pretty subtle modification. First of all, I did some research and looked up some flame patterns, and decided on a theme that I liked, and something that would work for my application.

I started with thin 1/8″ pin striping tape and laid out the pattern of the flames, being careful to cover all of the cracked areas. The tape peels up fairly easily to allow fixes and manipulation of the design.

Then I filled in the rest of the space with 1″ painters tape.

Time to spray the plastidip – I used 10 coats.

It did not peel perfectly, and did not look great until I touched it up. This was right after the tape was pulled off:

After everything was peeled, I used some Xylene and cotton swabs to carefully clean up the edges of the dip, where it started to stick to the tape. The xylene melts and re-activates the dip so you can fix peels, and smooth out edges. You can also “melt” down the corners and edges a bit to make it cleaner looking and stick better.

Final product: (in the rain)