hood fit

[Bird119]

I have a 66 Town Landau. The hood has always closed flat with the fenders. One morning I went to raise and then lower the hood and the back drivers side corner above the hinge remained approx. 1/4" higher than the fender. It fits fine everywhere else. Upon numerous openings and closings, the raised hood still remains. Is this a hinge gone bad that suddenly?

[paulr]

Hinge pins on OEM hinges will eventually break without a warning. There is no easy fix for this. If that’s what happened new hinges are available from Tbird vendors listed here on the site.

[Terry64HT]

Paul is probably correct, but first check the bolts holding the hinge and hood. There are three bolts holding the hinge plate to the inner fender and two holding the hood to the hinge.
Terry
64HT

[jtschug]

Lubricate the hood hinges with light machine oil and see if that helps.

[RAVEN]

Take a look at the pivot points at the hinge pins. Look specifically at the pin staking points. If there is any movement at the staked point, you have a failure waiting to happen. If and when it happens, it is known that the hood crashes into the fenders or the hood gets bent, causing an expensive repair Bill. The hinge pins are the biggest missed lubrication points on the car, usually because no one likes to have oil dripping or seen.
The hood hinge springs are VERY strong, considering that they can carry and hold a hood in an open position, so consider the power they have to bend things, or rip the pivot pins out of the hinge body. There are 4 pins per hinge, or 8 spots that can fail and do some sort of damage.
Not trying to be negative, just forewarning against possible problems.
If you do a SEARCH and find Jim Wulf's site, he has a posting on hinge replacement, without having to remove the hood, check it out.
Good luck
In the meantime lub the pivots.

[rzcrisis]

I have found in my experience that anything under extreme tension with bind points will cause fitment issues with hoods, trunk lids, doors, etc.

Before panicking, take Raven's advice and lube those pivot points first. It may be all that needs to be done to correct the issue. I have had luck doing this but also had to replace hinges when lube doesn't cut it when things are worn beyond lube help.

Good luck.
Randy

[RedBird64]

Story time! (I heard that groan..)
One of My hinges failed roughly 40 years ago at about 75K miles.
Back when mine failed there were no replacements available (pre-interweb). So I had a welder buddy doctor them up. We used some bolts with smooth sections and cut the threaded part off. Then he welded them in place of the original parts. (Cleverly, I used my dads new extension cord to suspend the hood from the garage rafters while the hinge was off. Inexplicably it didn't work very long after that).


The fix has held up fine but the back of my hood sticks up even though I slotted the mounting holes in both springs. Something must be sprung although this car has always enjoyed being disagreable for no good reason.
One of these days I'll get a spiffy new set (Paul, will need to borrow an ext cord).
I hope the repop parts are as robust as the old ones and don't have any of the little nuances our off-shore friends (nemisis) go so far out of their way to surprise us with.

Sorry, no pic of the extension cord.

Scott

[David Langhorne]

I have had my drivers side hinge off several times. I use a broom handle to keep it up with padding along rear edge so it doesn't scratch the cowl.