Beware of reflected sun damage while hood up!

Although I swear my allegiance to C3VR as BY FAR the best C3 forum on the web, I saw this on another forum and thought it might save someone a lot of grief. Wild and weird stuff!
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In 40 years of owning cars , I thought I'd seen it all , We had a car show Saturday ,June 12rh. I went with our "Beach Bums Corvette Club "in Manahawkin ,N.J. We all parked our cars on the side, lots of the club members opened the hoods, I had my hood up ,and was called to go judge cars for the show,about 45-minutes later I went back to my car ,and some of the members came up to me almost crying...that I better go check my hood,something happened.. I said what happened?? There it was ...about a foot long burn mark on the bottom side of my hood, the sun : had shined on my chrome air filter,and reflected back to the underside of my hood,just like a laserbeam ,or someone was using a magnafiing lens ..it burned the paint on bottom ...and bubbled the paint on top of the hood. you could see the path of the sun as it moved, I had completly redone and painted the underside 2 days before, with the Chevy semi-gloss black paint ..and was getting ready to install the heat insulation,It looked so good,so I took it to the show without it . ..It never fails.. And 2 weeks beforte that ..I cracked my "NEW" Mirrored glass T-Top on the drivers side!!! I give up !! So I called my insurance agent,might need to have the whole repainted ,if it can't be blended in .

Somebody was definitely born under a bad sign...bad mojo! I've never heard of that, but considering how reflective chrome is, it makes sense it can happen.

Weird Stuff!
But weird stuff happens.

Yikes

Who would have ever thought that would happen. Bummer about your hood but thanks for the warning.

Yeah I was warned about that at a car show before when I displayed my black vette with the hood up. I have a big chrome edelbrock airlid on it so I just remove it on sunny day shows. Before I was warned, I always wondered why people would put towels or rags on top of the air cleaner lid.

That totally sucks.

My initial reaction to this was "Why didn't someone lower the hood for him?" Then, as I thought about that I wondered if I would do that at a show since it wasn't my car or someone I knew.

If any of you saw that at a show and couldn't find the owner would you put the hood down for them? Initially they may be PO'd that you did, but once you explained it that should make them appreciative - I would hope!

I thought I wa the only one this had happened to.

My missus had left a one of those concave makeup mirrors on the floor of our daily driver one day in the sun. I was driving the car one day onlooked over and saw what I thought was one of those little hairy caterpillars crawling on the inside of the passenger door. When I got home I went to throw the little freeloader out and found that it was a burn in the door trim.

Took me ages to figure out what had done it as there was no chrome or anything in the interior until I noticed the mirror on the floor. Very luck the car didn't burn up. If it had been an older car without the fire resistant interior it may have been a different story.

I have seen that before at car shows, It happens more with flat air cleaner lids, but it is best to safe than sorry. I always watch to see any reflection on the underside of the hood. I had a cover made up with elastic to fit over my air cleaner.

Yep it does happen. Look at the cars in the shows and look for a towel or rag placed on top of the air cleaner. Funny how a cheesey towel can protect a nice paint job.
Roger

Man, that really bites. That explains the rags I have seen covering perfectly detailed engines at every show I've attended.