First Gen Hood
 

Guys
I found a hood for my 80 and it is in great shape, except the spots where the under frame attaches to the top skin. Question, how did Mazda attach these parts? Welded? Some type of glue? How do I get it fixed?
Thanks

It's a bonding glue that breaks down with all the heat under there.

Hopefully someone will chime in on a fix. Gluing the glue doesn't seem like a good fix and not sure how you could get it out.

Mazda used the same seam sealer on the hood as they did for the corners of the fenders, and other seams. if you're not going to concours the car, you can just run a bead of pretty much anything, seam sealer, silicon, etc around the part where the hood skin meets the frame. if you are going to show it, you'd need to use blobs of something kind of like Mazda.

bonus when you do get ti glued, closing the hood sounds like a mercedes, instead of a trash can

This is true! One of those little things you may not even notice unless you've experienced both. Gives the car a "well built" "taken care of" vibe.

Yeah, lol...
So is the sealer a structural thing or just more of a noise dampening? My original hood rusted in the area where this was aaplied so how about just putting some type of noise dampening thing like new cars use? I assume that sealer is not holding the frame onto the hood... right?

The outer hood skin wraps around and is folder over and crimped on the inner support structure all along the outside perimeter. The seam sealer is used at multiple spots between the inner support structure and outer skin to reduce the vibration on the outer skin. It's not structural in a crash or safety way, but it does bond both pieces together for reinforcement purposes. Not sure what new method you refer to. It's not hard or expensive to apply additional sealer to your hood to re attached the support structure.

check this out, its how they make the Miata hood, although the SA hood was similar

https://www.mazda.co.jp/carlife/classicmazda/story/2/

That is extremely cool, thanks for sharing that! Too bad I can't read Japanese...but Google Chrome's translate option did me just fine :biggrin: