I posted this while under the inflence of one too many bottles of smoked baltic porter - now I see that I should have tagged this on to VoCarlos post about filling and then using spray Plasti Dip. However just dipping the hoods into the dip seems to fill, coat and bond togather all the split and deteriorating gum hoods. The coating is much thicker, which I guess you could amend by thinning and does restore some rigidity to the gum. If you do this be careful to clean the hoods very well, I used alcohol, before dipping. It seems a robust finish. I think you can see from the photos that the one I double dipped has a much better finish, all the cracks and holes have been filled, but it was much harder to put on to the brake lever. The other thing is that it takes a long time to cure, they dry overnight bit have taken 2 days to really harden up. Plasti dip comes in lots of colors, sadly no celeste. Try it before dropping $60 on a new set of hoods - plasti dip is normally under $8 and enough for a dozen set of hoods.