Well, I have all the body panels repaired and all the rust has been dealt with, but now I have a problem. The hood rubbed on the fenders when I bought the car, but we thought we could fix that problem. Now, the doors, rockers, rear quarters all line up perfectly, but there is no room for the hood. With the fenders lined up with the doors, the fender to fender distance is 56.5 inches. The hood is also 56.5 inches wide. Has anyone else dealt with an issue like this? There is not much room to adjust the fenders out, and doing so would mess up the lines with the doors. As far as I can tell, all panels are original. I bought the car from the original owner who only mentioned one accident involving the passenger side fender, which we confirmed after the car was soda blasted. Can anyone measure their hood and tell me the dimensions? We are just totally perplexed.

Thanks,
Ken
'69 Cutlass S convertible

 

The bottom lip my hood is 55 1/2

The top of the fender is 56 11/16

 

You might have to get the help of a professional body man to do this. I don't have any experience; however, I have heard friends say that panel adjustment is difficult. If the parts fit together originally there has to be a way to put them back together.

 

Fitting the hood is something that needs to be done or taken into consideration when mounting doors and fenders. Factory always used shims at various points. Doors can be adjusted out where they meet the fenders and fenders can be shimmed. Make sure too that the hood hinges are good and not bent. There is adjustment too on the hood hinges for front to back and up/down.

 

Thanks for the responses. I have a professional body man doing this. He is the one who asked if I could post the question, because he has never seen anything like this. We discussed the shim option, but there were no shims in the door or fenders when we disassembled the car. He was wondering if the hood had been replaced at sometime or other, and if different models might have had different size hoods. I thought they would all be the same size. Maybe when the accident was repaired years ago, the shims were removed and not reinstalled, leading to the tight situation when I bought the car.

 

I wish these cars could talk. I have one that would say, "The body work at XYZ Olds was so crummy, They welded one of my fenders on and put a Oldsmobile emblem on a 69 442 Hood. "

Being almost 40 years old and given the level of "body work " over the years, there's no tell'in "Who shot Nelly in the Belly"

 

Do you have access to another hood to test it? Was the hood sitting flat with weight on it? Those hoods were all differnt sizes when new and even had bigger differences as the stamping dies wore. Lots of shims and time, everything effects something else, settle for evenly screwed up to meet GM tolerance standards. I've seen old timers squeeze hoods back together if sprung in a jig or with bar clamps and 2x4's on the edges. Mall rats? I was a gas station and body shop rat.


Allan

 

Sounds like you need to slide the doors out on the hinges and then shim the fenders out to match the doors.

 

Thanks for all the feedback. Today, we discovered part of the problem. When the fender was damaged, apparently the core support was removed in the repair. When they reinstalled it, they used the wrong mount bushings. We installed new ones and things are lining up pretty good. I pick up my rebuilt engine and transmission tomorrow, and am hoping to have some new paint on within the next few weeks.

 

Which brings up the question ...

Which hinge should you use with a glass hood ..?

Mine are tweaked and I'd like to use stock metal hood hinges ...

Are metal hood springs the right tension ..?

 

Cool, glad to hear your hood didn't have to be sawed off. I thought about the core support bushings but normally you shim those when you do the fenders and hood. But if it had the wrong ones it would drive you crazy until you figured it out, that assume word. I see cars all the time with the fenders tipped in or out on the front and the gaps messed up from bad or incorrectly shimmed support bushings.

Allan

 

Now I'm glad I didn't mess with that when I tore my car apart ...

California car, no rust, no need ...

 

mugzilla,

A lot depends on the manufacturer of your hood. Summit sells a hood spring kit HRD 210 Gold for 34.95 for the Harwood hoods. I would think that these would work.

 

Thanks. I have an all glass hood. It's well constucted though.