Owner's book · not a shop
Open HoodKnow the car. Then the window. Factory specs in plain English — don't authorize until you can say this at the counter.
Paperwork 01 · terms
Awaiting outside review · 27 August 2026. A checkbox is not a lawyer. Counsel has not signed plate-to-VIN, DPPA, live charges, or a courtroom venue.
Customer copy
Effective 27 August 2026 · the clauses below are the whole agreement
01 · Terms
These terms took effect 27 August 2026. Reading a spec card, pasting a quote, or searching a ZIP here means you accept them. If you do not accept them, close the tab. There is no account to cancel and no invoice to settle.
02 · Terms
We decode a VIN, print the factory fluid and spec card, translate recall campaigns and trouble codes, mark up a quote you paste or photograph, and hand you a few sentences to say at the counter. That is the whole job. Open Hood works for the owner.
03 · Terms
We do not book a bay. We do not write, sign, or sell the dealer repair order. We take no cut of your repair, and no shop pays us for your name. There is no lead auction and no “partners in your area.”
04 · Terms
Open Hood is not a licensed vehicle inspection, not a diagnosis, and not legal advice. We have never had your car on a lift. Nothing here replaces a technician with hands on the vehicle, and nothing here replaces a lawyer if a repair turns into a claim.
05 · Terms
Prices, labor bands, and service intervals are estimates built from public data and our own price book. We do not carry Motor labor times, Carfax files, or TecDoc part numbers, and we will not print a number as if we do. Treat every figure as a question to ask at the window, not a fact to sign.
06 · Terms
1HGCM82633A004352 is a sample Honda we use so the bay is not empty on the first visit. It is an example. It is not your car. Read the VIN off your own dash or door jamb before you act on anything.
07 · Terms
Measurements beat adjectives. Ask for the failed part, the reading that condemned it, and the out-the-door number in writing. If the shop disagrees with our sheet, that is a conversation, not a verdict — and the signature on the ticket is yours, not ours.
08 · Terms
Use it for your own vehicles, or the vehicle in front of you. Do not scrape this bay to stock someone else's shop system, resell our output as a paid inspection or a title report, or pass it off as your own product.
Do not hammer our routes to pull NHTSA, the EPA, or OpenStreetMap in bulk. Those sources are public — go to them directly and follow their terms. Do not upload documents or photos you have no right to send, and do not use the RO window to send us anything unlawful.
09 · Terms
A photo is resized and compressed on your own phone before anything moves. When you send a quote or a message through the RO window, you are telling us we may read it in order to answer you. We do not sell it, list it, or hand it to a shop network.
Do not send a Social Security number, a card number, or anything you would not read out loud at the counter. What we do with the rest is written out on the privacy page.
10 · Terms
Recall text, complaints, and safety ratings come from NHTSA. Mileage comes from the EPA. Rooftops come from OpenStreetMap contributors. Manufacturer, part, and shop names belong to those companies. We use them to identify a car or a part — not to claim we are them, speak for them, or represent them.
11 · Terms
The bay is provided as it sits, without warranty of any kind. Public feeds go down, map records go stale, and a decoder can miss a trim. We work to keep it honest, and we would rather print “we do not know” than a confident wrong answer — but we cannot promise the bay is complete, current, or right for your specific car.
12 · Terms
To the fullest extent the law allows, Open Hood is not liable for repair costs, downtime, a decision a shop or a writer made, or any loss that follows from something you read here. This bay is free and takes no card, so our total liability for any claim is capped at what you paid us — nothing — or the smallest amount the law will allow.
Some states do not permit these limits. Where that is true, they apply only as far as that state allows, and nothing here waives a right you cannot legally waive.
13 · Terms
We may update these terms. The effective date at the top moves when we do, and a material change gets its own line on this page. We may also close a desk or the whole bay. Because nothing of yours is stored on our side, there is nothing of yours to lose when we do.
14 · Terms
Write to us before anything else. Most complaints here are a wrong spec or a bad number, and those get fixed the same week. We have not named a court or an arbitration forum, and we will not invent one: when Open Hood has a registered entity and counsel signs off on a venue, it gets posted on this page before it applies to you.
Reach the desk
A bad spec, a stale recall, a number that does not match your ticket — send it through the RO window and we fix the bay. That window is also how you ask us to delete a ticket you already sent.