Hood mounting

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Major System Category: Body (Hood)
Task: Mount the hood
Parts: Corvette donor hinges
Prerequisite Tasks: Everything under the hood.
Additional Costs:
Time Requirement: 4 to 5 hours
Date Started: September 26, 2012
Date Completed: September 29, 2012
The task of mounting the hood and attaching the hinges is quite important. Get the hood messed up and the entire car is going to look cockeyed. This certainly requires more thought than just installing the bulb seal, flopping the hood over that and bolting the hinges tot he car. Alignment is very important. Now this isn't to say that if the hinges don't go on just right all is lost. The hood hinges mirror the hatch hinges in that they have some alignment capability.

This is where the hood mates to the body shell on the driver's side next to the  door hinge. The idea here is for the  ends to match up. I found that when i was off by 1/2 inch, this section had slid on me. Once the hinge  is bolted to the hood, this can still be adjusted by moving the hinge assembly where it attaches tot he chassis.

At this point in the build, I am nor ready to seal off the top of the tunnel and run the duct work through holes cut in the top panel. For now the top tunnel aluminum remains uninstalled. However, I did screw the piece that comes attached to the front of the body shell and ran bulb seal over that.

The laser level is an invaluable tool. This is a low light photo, because the garage door is shut and the lights are off.  The horizontal line bisects the headlight pods. This is an easy place to conduct measurements. One thing I discovered is that there no flat spots on the hood. It is a constant curve.

For my initial alignment, I positioned the hood so it runs flush along the body shell where the hood and body meet by the door hinges. I used Gorilla Tape to secure this area. This isn't perfect and things did shift around on me. I set up the laser level and ran the horizontal line so it bisected the headlight pods on both sides. Then I took my yard stick and set it in the pods. Initially, I was half an inch off side to side. The best way to describe the alignment process is to play with the hood until these measurements get within an acceptable tolerance. For me that is somewhere under 1/8 inch difference.

Passenger side light pod.

Driver's side light pod.

I snapped a line under the hood louvers and ran a measurement from the edge of the hood to the louver opening. In this case, everything was dead on. The alignment issues came from one side of the hood being slightly forward of the other side. The laser level is enormously helpful in getting this right. The other thing I did was drop the front end off the jacks so it rested on the suspension and the tires. This helped to eliminate a good chunk of the differences. The rest could be a slight difference in the way I have the shocks set on either side of the car. I am guessing that if I ran the same alignment procedure on my Corvette, I would see similar variations left to right.

The one flat piece I found was inside the front grill. I used a level to see how close I was. She is still a tad high on the driver's side, but well inside my 1/8 inch tolerance.

These are the 5/16 bolts connecting the hinge assembly to the  hood.

Moment of truth. The hood actually opened up. Right now I have a plastic tube holding it up.

I performed a preliminary attachment for the hood. Brought the car back down to the ground and ran the laser measurements over again. I did this a number of times. This is what takes time on this process. I am sure people with more experience can get through this part faster than me.