If you have a Kia Optima fiberglass or carbon fiber hood, it is especially important to use hood pins in order to keep your hood safely secured to your ride. Even the strongest lightweight Kia Optima hood has the potential to fly up if the wind catches it just right, and we've seen it happen more than a few times. Adding a set of Kia Optima hood pins is every bit as much about safety as it is about the cool race look you'll achieve by installing them.

Hood pins were originally made for the racetrack, but can now be found on many Kia Optima street vehicles for an aggressive look. Weekend Kia Optima racers know how important hood pins are, since there's nothing worse than your expensive carbon fiber hood catching the wind and having to drive home without a hood. Hood pins can be manufactured from steel or aluminum, and are available in a variety of colors and styles (such as traditional pin or latched) to best suit your vehicles style. They can be installed in sets of two or four, depending on whether your ride has the original Kia Optima hood hinges or not.

Q: What are hood pins? Why buy them?
A: 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.)