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What is the easiest way to remove the hood on a 54 Ford F500? Remove the two bolts holding hinge to hood on or remove the four bolts holding the entire hinge on to the cowl? I have heard people have a lot of trouble aligning the hood. Mine fits really nice, I don’t want to screw it up. I think it might be easier to take off to wire brus, sand, and paint.
On my F100 I took the nuts off the hinges - the hood stayed in place with the studs saying in their holes and with an extra set of hands we pulled the hinges away from the cowl.
I was thinking removing the two bolts that are wired together. Just easier to get to and only two compared to 4 but not sure of the spring action
That is the easiest way, in my opinion. 2 bolts per hinge rather than four. That is how I remove the hood on my 54. Plus the 4 hinge bolt holes have elongated holes to help adjust the hood's placement. So if your hood fits well leave them be.
The hood on my 55 worked great and closed correctly before it was painted last year. The body man had the hood off at the 2 hinge bolts and he put it back on and now the hood still closes beautifully!
My hood had to come off. One hinge was shot and the hood obviously never closed correctly. But that was such a simple issue compared to the entire truck being ROTTEN! If you remove the hinges from the cowl you'll have the realign them. But if you're going to paint the truck they should come off anyway, sad to say. I actually used a small etching tool to scrape a small scratch into the sheet metal around the hinge so I knew where they were before removal. That small scrape actually showed up a little even after paint. So that worked well.
Just a side note: make sure you have a few extra hands. That sucker's wonky and heavy. But if that's not possible, you might roll the front of the truck into a garage and fasten some ratchet straps to some eyebolts in the ceiling. Fasten the ratchets to each corner of the hood, put some tension on the ratchets, loosen the bolts and it should hang there effortlessly. Then you can push the truck back out of the garage and lower it down (preferably with an extra set of hands. You might do the same to reattach it. Nice thing about this is that you now have a system in place for your next set of early Ford restorations.
If the hood fits great and you need to take the hinges off the cowl, drill some very small alignment holes. Something you can put a #4 or smaller nail into for perfect realignment.
Haven’t had a chance to get to the hood yet. Maybe tonight. It looks like the hood is held on by just the two bolts on each side. Leaving the hinges on the truck, I think if I remove the two bolts on each side that attach the hinge to the hood and using an extra pair of hands or two, the hood should come right off. I have no way to get to the nut on the top bolt on each side. I did loosen it a while back and it seemed to be coming out. Maybe the nut is welded to the back or there is no nut just threads in the steel bar?
I did get the last piece of sheet metal welded on to the truck to replace the last bunch of holes. (Driver side under the fuel filler neck going towards the door) I have two coats of body filler over it. Maybe one more coat on that area and the body work should be complete. (Fingers crossed)
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