Hood receiver pins

[tony]

So I'm installing the hood this weekend. Note that I have an earlier kit #324. I have everything installed including latch, hinges, and pins. I installed everything according to the book. I gotta say this whole setup sucks for the hood! I can live with the 24 lb. struts that pop the hood up quickly. The main problem I'm having is the hood aligning with the pins. When its all shut and everything, it looks good with proper alignment. As soon as I open or close the hood the pins dont want to align at all and keep "missing" the pin. It's like the hinges move differently and skew the hood so it doesnt latch. Anybody have a fix for this?


Note: I have the nose cone, side panels and hood all installed with good gaps. Boy what a lot of work that was. so the hood hinge is the last piece to the front end I'm working on/

-tony

[JimLev]

I'm not that far along yet, just starting the engine side covers. The receivers for the firewall I got are electrical conduit connectors. Kind of cheesy if you ask me.
The Gen 2 has a new hood hinge setup that may be worth looking into.

[JOP33]

So I'm installing the hood this weekend. Note that I have an earlier kit #324. I have everything installed including latch, hinges, and pins. I installed everything according to the book. I gotta say this whole setup sucks for the hood! I can live with the 24 lb. struts that pop the hood up quickly. The main problem I'm having is the hood aligning with the pins. When its all shut and everything, it looks good with proper alignment. As soon as I open or close the hood the pins dont want to align at all and keep "missing" the pin. It's like the hinges move differently and skew the hood so it doesnt latch. Anybody have a fix for this?


Note: I have the nose cone, side panels and hood all installed with good gaps. Boy what a lot of work that was. so the hood hinge is the last piece to the front end I'm working on/

-tony

Tony - I don't know that either of these will help the issue you are having, but - we used Tim Whittakers Receiver Sockets and also placed a spring centered on the top of the grill to help push the hood up a bit when released. Again, I don't know that either of these would affect what you are seeing, but it's my $0.02.

Hood - Receiver.jpg

Hood Spring.jpg

[Kamp]

Tony I just finished my hood install, it has the gen1 hinges etc. and was amazed that it worked fine. I did do some things that might help. I have a .750" long taper on the pins. I changed the struts to 15# units, and have some wiggle in the hinge joints.

Warren

[tony]

i worked on it for awhile today. i've got it working better but not perfect yet. I actually believe it all stems from the old misaligned grille. When I originally aligned the grill, to center it, it was up about 1/2" on the driver side like many others. i shifted the grill down on that side to center it but in doing, unbeknownst to me also shifted down the hinge on the driver side. It was kicking the passenger side UP and i could not for the life of me get the alignment pins in. I then shimmed the bracket about 1/4" between the hood and the hinge to push the hood back up. That helped a lot and the hood now pops and closing much better. STill have to adjust more.
I hope the Gen 2 is much better for the new buyers as there is a long list of problems with this gen 1 kit.

[Tim Whittaker]

I have a billet piece to replace the plastic nut.

[Svtfreak]

The manual actually says you can taper the pins to help them align.

The conduit connectors are tacky. Tim has a billet part that is slick. I was going to make my own billet part but I elected to wait for Tim to finish his hood hinge set up. I am also playing with a hood hinge also (currently it’s made out of paint stirrers lol) but I’m not sure I’ll get it to work right or even find a way to mount it if I do. I’m kinda waiting on Tim. I can’t stand the idea of dragging the hood across my 10k$ paint job using just two little strips of felt to stop damage. And that’s just one of my problems with the gen 1 good hinges. My other thought is to adapt gen 2 but I haven’t even looked at how they work. I only know that the factory five style won’t work for me.

I want it to hinge at the front, go straight up then forward, and latch at the back. That’s my end goal. No forward movement at the back. Everything should go straight up then forward.

[progmgr1]

I heard from David Correia at FFR yesterday afternoon. He quoted the Gen 2 hood hinge components (34815) at $310 plus shipping. Looks like everything is included, and will require only some minor mods to adapt to my Gen 1 Hot Rod. Seems like the Gen 2 hinges work the way you want. Keith

[Tim Whittaker]

I kinda backed off on the hinge to see what FFR came up with. I didn't want to duplicate the effort as well as see how theirs looked. I'm making some progress but slowly. I've taken two parts off the inventory as FR incorporated my part idea into the kit. No sense wasting my time to have the idea stolen and added to the kit again. Consistent with the rest of our parts, ours will look better, work better and be less expensive. Just the way it is .....

[Svtfreak]

Completely understand that, Tim. Should i look at the gen 2 stuff from ffr then?

[Tim Whittaker]

Completely understand that, Tim. Should i look at the gen 2 stuff from ffr then?

Up to you my friend. I will do my best to have something soon. If you elect to go with the FFR unit. I can probably fix it to make it work better. I do appreciate the gesture of waiting for our design and wish I was further along for you guys.

[Svtfreak]

Up to you my friend. I will do my best to have something soon. If you elect to go with the FFR unit. I can probably fix it to make it work better. I do appreciate the gesture of waiting for our design and wish I was further along for you guys.

I’ll wait as long as I can for your design tim. I got an email from ffr with theirs today. It looks like it would work but I’m not sure how it latches. I’ve got a couple months maybe I can wait and see what you come up with. I’ll wait till that’s the last thing I have to do before take apart for paint lol.

[Bgardner]

Up to you my friend. I will do my best to have something soon. If you elect to go with the FFR unit. I can probably fix it to make it work better. I do appreciate the gesture of waiting for our design and wish I was further along for you guys.

Tim
There is also interest here to see what you come up with, like others not happy to slide hood closed on felt strips.