School me on hood pins

New oil cooler occupies the space where the hood latch/bracket lived so I'm going with some kind of hood pin setup. 
Any thing special about any of them?

Aerocatches > (traditional) hood pins

X2 for Aerocatches--they are great.  All the big-time race cars use them, just like me.

I'll add to the chorus of "aerocatch!" Paint the underside with a red dot, and you'll never be the guy that forgets the pins and ruins their weekend by having the hood blow into their windshield.

Second pick would be QuikLatch. Super nice but you don't get the "obviously not pinned" aspect like the aerocatches give you. The mini ones are great for stuff like bumpers/air dams/etc that need to come off quickly.

Old style hood pins are OK too - depends on what you prefer.

I used regular pins on one car that had restrictions - you couldn't raise the back of the hood for ventilation. I just installed extra long pins, the bonnet looked fine when standing there for tech but out on the track at speed, the bonnet floated up about an inch and let a lot of air out!  Specialized need I grant you but aerocatches wouldn't do that!

+1 to old school hood pins 

Aerocatch are nice but pricey and harder to install. Ultimately depends on your budget and what you find more attractive 

I'm a fan of this style of captive sliding hood pin- they're cheap, you can't lose them, and if you get your adjustment right they don't rattle.

I'm going to disagree with all the aerocatch fans here- hood pins are not a place where I'm looking to add complexity to my car.  Simple is good.

$9 Mr.Gasket stick with a big cotter pin guy here, bend the end of the pin you pull if you're facny, add metal string if you're disorganized. Being hood-butted just once in your Hyundai Accent speedster will cure the human mind of hood pin forgetfulness 

I've used multiple types and Aerocatch is vastly superior. The hand-wringing over installation is overblown. I'm no genius installer but managed to get them on my E30 BMW which has a hood that goes down while going back also. If your hood just drops down, super easy. 

I like hood pins, especially at all four corners, if you need to add clearance, or open the rear a bit for cooling.

But at some point you will forget to put the pins in...

Seems simple enough, just peel and stick:

I've got both old-school pins and Aerocatches on my track car. Aerocatches are the way to go. Stay away from the flush model that attaches to the underside of the hood because they are dramatically more difficult to install cleanly and if your rivets fail, your hood is no longer attached even if your latches are still closed.

Why are they better? Much quicker to open/close, easy to visually check from the driver's seat (I have bright stickers on the bottom to help), they have a two-stage lock and there's no chance of losing anything. You can even get locking ones - I've had a battery stolen from a car with a hood that could be opened from outside.

But no matter what hood pins you use, you need to institute a "hood closed = pins in" policy. It doesn't matter if you're just closing it for a moment, if it's closed it needs to be pinned. Show some discipline here and you will minimize the chance of wrapping your hood over your roof. This also applies to lug nuts in my shop, if they're on, they're torqued.

Keith Tanner said:

But no matter what hood pins you use, you need to institute a "hood closed = pins in" policy. It doesn't matter if you're just closing it for a moment, if it's closed it needs to be pinned. Show some discipline here and you will minimize the chance of wrapping your hood over your roof. This also applies to lug nuts in my shop, if they're on, they're torqued.

All of the this.  I built the mindset of lugs on/wheels torqued as a single operation about 16 years ago, and now I feel anxious between the time the lugs are snugged and the torque wrench is applied.  There is NO "I'll get it later".  Later is right now.

Adopt this kind of personal policy and you will never have loose lugnuts or have a hood fly up in your face.  Or drive off without putting fluid in the transmission.

In reply to Pete. (l33t FS) :

I like to call this rule "if it LOOKS installed, is IS installed."  Avoids lots of issues, all over the car.

In reply to Pete. (l33t FS) :

For something like the fluid in the trans situation, if there's a reason I can't do it now (say, no driveshaft so it would be all drooly), I'll put a bottle of trans fluid in the driver's seat :)

In reply to Keith Tanner :

I put painters tape on the steering wheel with a note.

As for the Aerocatches; If I changed out to those I'd have the issue of not being able to see the hood / front edge of the car.  I'm so low in the car that I use the hood pins as a visual for placement.

Note I also put the pins in the car anytime I shut the hood. If the pins are out the hood goes up.....every time.

In reply to Tom1200 :

I have to admit I'd never considered using hood pins as sights :)

+1 for the "if it's down, it's pinned" rule for aerocatches.

I also have a laminated checklist taped to my dash for pre-track stuff.  Mostly it's about what safety gear in what order, but there's a few bullets at the top for things like "hood closed and latched".  The #1 item on the list is about fuel quantity though. :)

Tom1200 said:

In reply to Keith Tanner :

I put painters tape on the steering wheel with a note.

I was doing some tune tweaking on an LS1 equipped vehicle, which required that I fail out certain sensors, disable long term fuel trims, disable power enrichment, a bunch of stuff.  Having only 15 minutes here, 20 minutes there to work on it, I left it that way and went out as opportunity dictated to log and tweak.  Left a note on the work order "DO NOT DRIVE - TUNE NOT SAFE".  

Customer stopped by, vehicle was released to him.  Pete E36 M3s himself.  Didn't you see the note?  "Yeah but I didn't read it, I just threw it out."

That turned into a fingerpointing game where I should have built a new tune with all the disabled stuff enabled, every time I stopped work on it.  Which would be great were I working on it in hours long blocks instead of small chunks...

Pete. (l33t FS) said:

Tom1200 said:

In reply to Keith Tanner :

I put painters tape on the steering wheel with a note.

I was doing some tune tweaking on an LS1 equipped vehicle, which required that I fail out certain sensors, disable long term fuel trims, disable power enrichment, a bunch of stuff.  Having only 15 minutes here, 20 minutes there to work on it, I left it that way and went out as opportunity dictated to log and tweak.  Left a note on the work order "DO NOT DRIVE - TUNE NOT SAFE".  

Customer stopped by, vehicle was released to him.  Pete E36 M3s himself.  Didn't you see the note?  "Yeah but I didn't read it, I just threw it out."

That turned into a fingerpointing game where I should have built a new tune with all the disabled stuff enabled, every time I stopped work on it.  Which would be great were I working on it in hours long blocks instead of small chunks...

We have "do not operate" tags that we hang on cars - it's pretty common for one of our development cars to be disabled in some way, but someone else has to move it. Anyone here would know to ask before removing one of those tags. It's a lot harder to miss a tag than a note on the work order.

Pete, sounds to me like you should have kept the keys until it was ready to be released :) There's a lot to be learned from the construction industry about "lock out tag out" procedures, because people get killed otherwise.

In reply to Keith Tanner :

I did.

The nice thing about a Fiat X1/9 is that the hood with the hinges on the front end will never fly up and smack your windshield.

That said, we use six cheap $8.99 a pair from Amazon hood pins on our Fiat.  Two on the frunk, and four on the trunk, which has the hinges removed to make engine access easier.  It they are not installed we store them in the driver's seat.

The habit of not leaving things looking installed when incomplete is a good one.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ said:

I'm a fan of this style of captive sliding hood pin- they're cheap, you can't lose them, and if you get your adjustment right they don't rattle.

I'm going to disagree with all the aerocatch fans here- hood pins are not a place where I'm looking to add complexity to my car.  Simple is good.

+1

I should develop a hood pin habit like that.  I use for of the cheap ones from jegs so that the hood just comes straight off and I can lift the rear of the hood a bit to bleed off heat.  I can't tell you how many times I've accidentally hit the wipers and sent all four pins flying off into the grass...

Wow! Thanks all! Lots of good food for thought here