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Hi all, Hope people can learn from my mistake.
Whilst at the practise day at Lakeside on the weekend I forgot to double check the bonnet clips and found out, in a painful way, the consequences of my actions. This is the shot from in cabin and just passed the kink, not going too fast.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tnjVM059OMg

Cheers Paul.

Ouch!

Sorry to see it happen to you Paul. It must have given you such a fright when it popped up like that. Well done @ keeping your cool and pulling over safely.

Apart from the bonnet, is there anything else damaged?

Thanks for the concerns, All ok, Had a headache and sore neck for a day or two but fine now. The car's fixed now, new bonnet and hinges, lucky to get a silver one second hand from Mx-5 plus. I acually raced 4 races the next day, just didn't lift the bonnet, lol. I just hope that this posting will help somebody else avoid doing what I did.

Cheers Paul.

that happened to me driving my brothers car down princes hgwy last year. Scary stuff

I would not like it to happen on a road car with the roof down. The only thing that stopped me from being knocked out was my helmet. Did your car have the roof on at the time?

Cheers Paul.

I was wondering why you were trawling through Richard's bonnet collection.
That made me jump just watching the video, definitely a brown-pants moment, lucky you didn't get knocked out.

I usually pop the bonnet as I'm within 10metres from my drive-way doing less than 5km/h, I don't think I'll do that anymore just in case...

crewmans wrote:I would not like it to happen on a road car with the roof down. The only thing that stopped me from being knocked out was my helmet. Did your car have the roof on at the time?

Cheers Paul.

I'll be honest, it was totally my stupid mistake that got me. My brother had a small front end (Mazda Astina) and we got a new bonnet for him. Since the front was bent the latch didn't secure the bonnet so I just said let's drive it like that to the repair shops looking for quotes to get the front end straightened. I didn't even secure it with a zip tie. I thought the weight would keep it down. It did for a couple of hours actually and on the way home, coming down a hill, a gust of wind must have picked it up and smashed it against the windshield. Lucky the window didn't break but the bonnet was too damaged to be used again so we had to get another one.

I was wondering why you were trawling through Richard's bonnet collection.
That made me jump just watching the video, definitely a brown-pants moment, lucky you didn't get knocked out.

All fixed now, just have the pinstriping to go on. So glad Richard had a bonnet. I acually damaged my helmet and yes very lucky, or maybe a really dense head, that it wasn't a lot worse. I did lose my senses for a split second.

I'll be honest, it was totally my stupid mistake that got me

Same here.lol. Apparently it happens to a lot of people, I heard heaps of people say that everyone has either had it happen to them or it's happened to someone they know. It's funny how people like myself keep re-inventing the wheel.lol.

Cheers Paul.

You're amongst good company, 2 of our most seasoned motorsport club members have done the same.

Scary moment. Some silly mistakes seem to happen more often than you'd expect. Once I was doing a motorkhana in my dad's MGA and did a full test before realising that I'd left the handbrake on. The MGA never did have a particularly strong handbrake, haha. When I admitted my mistake, I found that all of my older brothers and even my dad had done the same at least once... Glad to hear you were okay.

Ouch

I did the same thing 2 months ago
after racing at Morgan Park, came home and had car in garage, did some work but closed bonnet and didnt lock clips,
a week later took it for a drive - down a hill at 80kms and POW - same thing

Aerocatch is the solution. At least they're easy to see when left open.

Might be an idea to rewire the annoying door beeper to the bonnet.

Ouch, car sounded great.