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I have this going on with the hood alignment on my ‘71. The hinge is raised as far as it will go but the rear is still low and the front is high. Are there supposed to be rubber bumper or cushions to help align the hood? The door gap looks good and the body mount under the front of the fender is good.
Before you get making to many adjustments, look at the total picture. The gap between the door and the fender is not consistent at the bottom end. Lots of things to look at. Did you have the hood off lately? What is the condition of the radiator core support? Any corrosion forward of and below the battery? My '72 had core support problems due to corrosion problems just above the rubber RH radiator core support mount. The problem appeared to be battery acid from years poor maintenance by a previous owner. Get under that area and look up, it's a common problem area. In my case, the inner fender under the battery mount was completely rusted out, along with the core support where it joined the inner fender.
Hope yours is in better shape and it's an easy fix.
There are rubber bumpers at the rear of the hood but they are not really intended to be used to align the hood. You can raise the front of the fender with some body shims to fix the door gap and close the front hood gap. But as mentioned it looks like the latch needs to come down. Once you do this you will likely have to rotate the hood hinges to align the hood to the cowl as it will get narrow at the bottom and separate at the top.
I think the picture might be misleading on the door gap due to the bump out at the bottom of the door. The door gap is really very close to perfect. I don't think it is off far enough to make this much of a difference in the hood alignment. Also, the left side of the hood is perfect so I'm reluctant to lower the latch for fear of throwing the left side out of alignment.
No rust issues on the truck anywhere, it's a Texas truck and the body is very solid.
I can play with the hood latch but it seems something else is wrong given that I have the hinge on the right side is up as high as it will go and the hood is still lower than the cowl in the back.
I installed rubber bumpers in all 4 locations but that didn't really do anything. I found that the left side hinge was binding and not going down all the way but even fixing that didn't help. I took the hood off and laid it on my driveway and it rocks quite a bit like it is warped. I have the hood latch down about as far as it will go and it still doesn't close the gap and it makes the hood very hard to open. The hood seems to be well made and it's hard to imagine that it's warped but that is what I suspect now.
Again, the door is slightly out at the bottom which makes it look like the gap is pinched at the bottom but it's not really that bad. It may be 1/16 or less out of alignment but it is not very much at all.
I'm currently in Whitesboro/Collinsville TX visiting my daughter. I have to drop my wife and son at the Dallas airport on Thursday afternoon (flying back to Washington St.) I'm driving back over the weekend. I noticed your location says Dallas, I will be free to swing by and help after dropping them at the airport if you want help. I've lined up a number of these hoods in the past and I find it's easier with an extra set of hands. PM me if that works for you and we can work out contact info and a time.
I'm currently in Whitesboro/Collinsville TX visiting my daughter. I have to drop my wife and son at the Dallas airport on Thursday afternoon (flying back to Washington St.) I'm driving back over the weekend. I noticed your location says Dallas, I will be free to swing by and help after dropping them at the airport if you want help. I've lined up a number of these hoods in the past and I find it's easier with an extra set of hands. PM me if that works for you and we can work out contact info and a time.
I'm pretty far out of your way if you are going to DFW so I don't want to put you out although I would welcome another set of eyes on this hood. I'm in Royse City, that's 50 miles one way and in the opposite direction you would go to head to Washington state.
I've gone a few rounds with it now with very little luck.
I found on the right side that I can raise the hinge as far as it will go and the hood still sits below the cowl at the back. At this point I can only assume that I will have to shim the rubber bumper at the back to bring the hood into alignment at the back. If I lower the hinge, the hood will hit the bumper on the way down and pivot on the bumper to raise the back of the hood so it kinda works in reverse. Raise the hinge to lower the back and lower the hinge to raise the back. However, If I use this method to fix the back of the hood it ends up in a bind and makes the hood hard to open so I don't think that is how it should be.
Even with the hood latch lowered as far as it will go, it will not bring the front of the right side of the hood down to the bumper so again, I think the hood is warped or sprung so I'm either looking at a replacement hood or just live with it and I don't think my OCD will let me live with it.
There is a ton of adjustment in the front end of these trucks, the youtube link below goes over a number of them. Unfortunately they don't focus on the hood near enough but it's a good example of how many things can play into the hood lining up correctly. I'm not saying that your hood couldn't be warped, there are a number possibilities. One thing to try if your convinced the hood is warped is to line everything up as best you can and then put a small block of wood into the space that is on the low side of the hood and bring the hood down onto the block and then push down on the high side of the hood. Sometimes you can bring a warped panel (door, trunk lid, hood, ect) back into alinement by doing this. Basically over twisting the hood to get it to go back to where it should be, it could take a lot of effort with this size of a panel. Also be careful not to push a dent into your fender from the block of wood. I watched Chip Foose fix a few panels this way years ago so I tried it on a warped trunk lid and it worked great.
I tried the block of wood trick but all it did was bend my hood hinge to the point that the hood wouldn't even close any more. I was able to straighten it out enough to get it working again but that trick cannot be done on the truck. I might be able to do that on the ground if I can get someone to stand on the opposite corner while I bounce on the high one but the hood feels pretty stiff so I'm not sure that is going to work.I may try to fudge on the door gap and see if I can get something reasonable on the hood without going too far off on the door gap.
on mine, the rear of the hood looked like yours. down to far next to the cowl. both hinges were all the way up. i lowered the front of the hinge only and it worked. just a thought and easy to do.
on mine, the rear of the hood looked like yours. down to far next to the cowl. both hinges were all the way up. i lowered the front of the hinge only and it worked. just a thought and easy to do.
I agree with lowering the front of hinge only it will rotate the pivot up and forward aligning the hood.
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