More Headroom in the Milan SL

In the few years that I’ve owned the Milan SL, I’ve tried numerous tweaks to squeeze my too tall body into the tight interior of the Milan. I’ve made several seats to position my body differently. I’ve made several versions of my own race hood to make more room around my knees. But with all of the modifications I’ve made, I’ve never had enough space above and around my head. So I set off to make yet another hood with more headroom.

The plan was to start with a copy of my current hood to make the plug (prototype) for the mold. I would somehow expand the “dome” area of the hood all while maintaining the sleek lines of the Milan (if possible). My first approach was to cut the dome into concentric rings. Then space those rings apart and fill in the gaps. This became unwieldy very quickly. Also it was very difficult to see how I could get the shape right and still provide enough space.

Then it occurred to me that I might be able to position a separate dome piece onto the hood to give it more height (more headroom). So I started with a hood missing only the top of the dome since it was going to become redundant. I then screwed on a section of dome high up on the hood tilted just the right way to roughly continue the lines of the visor area. This gave me the basic shape that I was looking for but left some nasty seams to be evened out with a lot of body filler and sand paper.

More sanding and priming…

More steps to completion. The processes of making the mold and the actual new hood from the mold are not shown here.

Notice that the hood grew in length in the process. It now partially covered my “No Motor” sticker on the rear bodywork. Also shown is the side by side shot next to the current hood (with the arrow).