hood adjustment

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jrand

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searched to no avail; hood took a little shot in my accident; not sure if the hood has a little buckle in it, or if the hood stop may have been adjusted by the accident to catch it a little too high; question is: how do i adjust the hood stops? theres a rubber pc on top that looks like i might be able to torque on with a wrench, or does the rubber come off to expose a bolt?

it doesnt quite seal at the moment, but adding some extra weatherstripping and adjusting to ahve the hood stop a little lower should do the trick...
 
check the lines around the entire hood... but i'd imagine you bowed it a bit in the accident... I dont remember an adjustments, but i'll look tonight...
 
The hood will align itself after a full driving cycle. Drive up to 60mph in D4, then rev it to 4000RPM and shift to D5 and back to D4 five times. Then do a few stops from 100 - 0, don't remember how, many so just call it five to be safe. Repeat 3x and then idle for 30 min.
 
You won't be able to get the hood to look right with an adjustment. You will have to get the hood fixed. Check with your favorite bodyshop, it'll likely be 100 to 200 bucks to have them restore the hood's lines.
 
markie, get real you didnt even know what a drive cycle was until that day.
 
the hood probably does have the slightest buckle in it; but my LS is operable salvage so its not worth throwing the $100 at it. the gap is small enough that i could seal it with weatherstripping today, i just wanted to see if i could get it to sit a little better w/o the extra weather strip. im gonna steal this dudes picture for reference: http://www.lincolnvscadillac.com/showpost.php?p=2037227496&postcount=6

the hood stops are at the bottom of the picture, they are the rubber pieces sticking out of that pc of plastic that covers the radiator (in the picture you can see one just south of his filter). the two i need to fix have cracks in the housing and i just dont want to start torquing on them and break them and have them end up costing an arm and a leg @ lincoln. just curious if anyone has ever done it. having the hood look slightly crooked wont kill me, this car is just going to be my daily driver now.

also those plastic/nylon screw-in retainers that hold that pce of plastic over the radiator down were all busted too. they have a sleeve and screw in. i cant find those mofos anywhere. trying lincoln tomorrow. im 0 for life on those. i checked ace/lowes/tsc/hd/do it best/advance auto/auto zone/oreilly/napa nobody carries em or anything that will even fit the hole
 
OK, if you don't care that much about the car, what you might do is look for where the bucke in the hood is. When you find it, use a nylon strap right across the buckle, then carefully lift the hood up to try and bend it back straight. You'll want to secure the strap to something heavy enough to take the force without wrapping directly against the fenders because you don't want to make a new problem. Perhaps you can use some 2x4s and bath towels, with a 2x4 under the front tires, one over the hood, with the towels in place to equalize the force applied and the 2x4s tied together to provide resistance when you raise up on the hood. No guarantees that this will work right though. You can use this idea, modifying it as necessary to make it work, but if it were me I'd just have a pro do the job.
 
i checked it with some grease the other day; the hood is definitely hitting the stop on the side that took the light impact, so i am going to try to lower the stops on that side and see if that brings the hood closer to the headlight. i am hoping that compensates for the buckle. I am looking at a gap of less than a 1/2 cm to get a good seal on it, and thats w/o extra weather strip. adding the weather strip is an option for me as appearances are a bit moot now, although the car looks decent considering what it has been through.

i agree w you telco i definitely wouldnt try to remove the buckle myself, i played with the fender for a minute to straighten it out enough to fit a headlight in while i shopped for a new fender; the aluminum is just a different beast. i have no confidence in my ability to straighten the hood, will def. take it somewhere if it comes to that (or possibly pick up a new hood altogether)
 
Cool. Never heard of the grease thing to check where contact points are. I'll have to remember that. Good luck with it.
 
M4rk said:
The hood will align itself after a full driving cycle. Drive up to 60mph in D4, then rev it to 4000RPM and shift to D5 and back to D4 five times. Then do a few stops from 100 - 0, don't remember how, many so just call it five to be safe. Repeat 3x and then idle for 30 min.
Click to expand...

...Worked after I hit the deer in my Gen I. You forgot to mention that the engine must be cold at the start or it is not a drive cycle.

Seriously though the aluminum hoods are kinda easy to bend. After deer wrecking I was able to bend mine back by hand. I probably had less damage though.
 
heres an update on this:
i havent really been putting much time at this bc i broke one of the bolts and have plenty of other projects. but i have found out that ford wants $8 for one of the actual hood stops. they call them 'hood adjustment bumpers'. there are 3 pieces, one is a nut that goes down into a hole in the frame, theres a M6 bolt with an X-shaped head and a rubber stopper that goes on top of the bolt's x-shaped head. i pulled the pc of rubber off the top and tried to turn the bolt after giving it a good wd40 treatment but it was either seized or there something crazy about that nut that locks it. i cant tell, mine broke before i got a chance to figure it out. the nut is pretty deep so i can see why the wd40 would not have penetrated it enough to turn it. you can get two 'hood adjustment bumpers' from ebay/amazon/etc for about $11 or you could do what i plan to do and just use two 1/2in toggles and one bolt ~$5 for 12 bolts and 12 toggles at lowes. just put the rubber piece on top of the bolt, it flexes and can accomodate the flat & circular head of the bolt i am using. so in other words you dont need an xshaped head on your bolt. pretty sure you wont find one anyways. hopefully messing with the hood today, gotta order a coolant control valve bc it decided to take a s_hit on me
 
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