What are hood pins? Why buy them?
Hood pins are mechanism for 'locking' your hood when it's closed. They can be particularly useful if you have an aftermarket hood on your car. The reason is because the factory hood latch hook was specifically designed for the hood latch on your car. The testing that car manufacturers do to ensure the effectiveness of the hood latch is extremely intensive and they have incredible resources to perform these tests. While aftermarket hood manufacturers often build their hoods with latch hooks that are intended to replicate the factory hood latch hook, the fact is aftermarket hoods have a different weight, shape, and makeup than factory hoods, and aftermarket hood manufacturers do not have the same resources to do the capital-intensive testing needed to make sure the latch works perfectly under all circumstances. So if you are buying an aftermarket hood, it's essentially a great safety precaution to buy hood pins just to be 100% sure the hood will stay closed whenever you're driving. (Important note: some aftermarket hoods do not come with latch hooks at all, in which case hood pins are actually required. Check our product listing details to see if hood pins are required.)