w2green

I recently bought a 1972 cutlass that has a 442 hood and grille on it. I'm having trouble closing the hood. The hood latch wont clamp. HELP!!!!!!!

oldspackrat

Do you mean the standard 442 hood with the small chrome louvers on the sides of the hood or the W30 hood with the 2 openings towards the front of the hood? Also is it a factory hood or aftermarket? The latch is adjustable side to side & fore & aft. Also pictures of what you have would help us help you.

Allan R

When you say it has a 442 hood, what are you trying to say? Do you mean it has the W25 hood, or the W29 hood?

If it's the W29 (all metal hood): The latch assembly on the rad support is adjustable, it can also be shimmed if necessary.
What does "won't clamp" mean. Do you have a 72 Cutlass Assembly Manual? If you do, have a look at page 11-100. It shows the latch assembly. Try loosening the 3 bolts and moving the latch asm one way or the other till you get a positive latch.

If it's a repro W30 hood? 98% of them don't latch at the front because they're not reinforced to do that.

Post a picture of your problem.

oldcutlass

I merged your duplicate threads, its not necessary to post the same question in multiple forums.

w2green

w2green

Its the 442 hood with the chrome louvers. Please see the pictures of the hood, hood latch assembly.


442 hood




Hood latch assembly

oldspackrat

There are three bolts that hold that latch in and below that is the support and below that there "may" be a shim or two. Look under there and see if you can raise the latch under the top metal plate.

Allan R

Well, first of all it's not a 442 hood. That's the hood that was the standard for the 1971/72 Cutlass S. A real W29 442 hood would have the Oldsmobile script on the drivers side close to the lip. It should look like this:



Second, (and I know this is likely a personal thing with owners) the faux hood louvers aren't supposed to be chrome, or silver. They came painted the same as the body, with the upper ridge trimmed in silver.

Looking at the second picture, it appears that the hood latch has been moved to the left. Try undoing those 3 bolts (just loosen them, they don't need to come out) and slide the latch back to the right where the paint shows it was before. Hopefully then you can get rid of the coat hanger tie downs.

Ever done a headlight alignment on your car? You won't be able to with the headlight bezels in wrong. They're upside down. The wide end goes to the inside. Take it off, invert and line up the headlight adjustment screws - you'll see what I mean. They are also 1971 headlight surrounds. The 72 surrounds are black with silver reveal. (see picture above)

w2green

Thanks for information on the the hood and the headlight bezels. I will try moving the hood latch to the right.

RetroRanger

to add the 71-72 bezels are the same but as Allan stated 72 bezel was black with silver reveal while the 71 was all aluminum color.

Allan R

A minor point to clarify also the faux louvers. They were body color on the Cutlass S and Cutlass models except when they were part of the 442 W29 package. In that case they would have been black.

andrewk94

Bringing this thread back. I sanded and painted radiator support and took off the hood latch. After painting I put the latch back and the hood closed nicely. I opened and closed the hood at least 10 times and had no problem. On 11th try the hood would not close all the way. It seems like the latch needs to move over by a quarter inch. The top part scrapes the side of the latch. is there a way to adjust this? Please note I have a fiberglass air induction hood.

the pins had to be adjusted as well. Only way to close hood is to remove latch assembly and use pins. Anyone run into this before? Makes me regret the painting of the radiator support.

oldcutlass

Perhaps on the 11th time the mounting points weren't tight enough and the hood shifted.

andrewk94

Thanks. We adjusted the latch. Very little play. Seemed like the hood would not go all the way down. The latch seems to function. All we did was paint it. The mechanism seems to work.

I believe we did tighten all the mounting points.. The only strange thing is that at some time, we’ll before I owned her, someone had put spacers between the sheet metal where the latch goes into the hole.