Hey everyone just looking for some expertise and suggestions with a hood removal on my 04 X-Type. My current hood liner is sagging pretty bad so I went ahead and bought a new aftermarket liner made of some synthetic material. The installation instructions are telling me to remove the hood to install the new liner. I've talked about this with some car guys and they seem really hesitant to removing the hood due to the springs being weight loaded and that when putting the hood back on it would make it an extreme pain to get everything aligned correctly again. Is this a legitimate concern? I could do the install without removing the hood but I was kind of looking forward to having free access to giving my engine compartment a full cleaning and applying some touch up paint in areas. All suggestions and help is really appreciated! I've attached the link to the hood liner in case anyone might be interested in doing the same thing with their car, it's pretty slick.
Thanks!
Jaguar S-Type & X-Type Hood Bonnet Liner Insulation Pad - eBay (item 200609847249 end time May-25-11 13:32:18 PDT)

 

mnftbl55, personally, I would leave the hood where it is and install the liner with the hood up. I would just have some masking tape handy to help hold the hood liner in place unless you have 2 friends that are willing to help you out with this. Then it is just a matter of getting a few holes to line up. I would definitely start at one side of the hood liner and work my way across it.

As for doing the cleaning, as long as the hood is open, I don't see where having the hood off is going to make things any more easy for you unless you are planning on using a pressure washer. If you are thinking this, DON'T!!!!!!!! There will be a lot of guys that have done this ahead of you and ran into lots of engine issues after the fact. The coils on the plugs will let water into the plug wells and then you have a real headache on your hands until you can run the engine for awhile up at temp and burn off the water.

 

That is Gonzo's liner. He's a member on here. Perhaps PM/e-mail him and you can discuss it. I have his liner in the garage just haven't done it yet but others on here have so stay tuned as someone will chime in.

 

Thanks guys, I'm hopefully going to be able to put it on here in the next couple of days. Mohrd thanks for letting me know that's Gonzo's liner, I'll pm him to throw some ideas around.