The new hood is "on". I was not too happy about the whole situation of obtaining and mounting the hood. The guy said it would be off the car and ready to be installed when I showed up. I got there late and the hood was still on the car, and I noticed a "tech" reaching through the grills and fiddling around with a very small wrench.
Comes to find out, the guy had sold the section of the hood opening mechanism that includes the pull handle in the car... and since the hood was closed and latched, there was no way to open except to remove the two locking spring clips...
They attempted to do this with a small wrench and had successfully removed two of the four T30 bolts. The other two ended up stripped. The guy I bought it from was like, well we will get it off tomorrow, which was not a possibility because I was already supposed to be on the road to Santa Barbara and I have my DMV appointment on Monday. What ended up happening is I went to Home Depot and bought a saws all and cut the hood free. You will see next to the left driver side grill where my frustration and impatience led to the front of the hood getting damaged.
We ended up getting the hinges on and the hood closed and opened freely and locked as it should. It was already really late so nothing else was attached and the hood was not properly aligned. I ended up giving the guy less than his asking price and after some talking, we smoothed things over a bit.
All in all for the price I paid, I am happy with the pick up. Under 200 dollars, and besides the saws all damage, there is only one other significant chip. I'll be spending today and tomorrow getting the fit right and will hook up the windshield washer nozzles.