Were C3 hood hinges mounted directly to the steel support pieces in the fender skirts, or did the mounting bolts go through fiberglass? On the ever-challenging '68 L79 I'm working on, the bases of the hinges mount directly to the steel, with the fender skirts cut away. Even at that, when I remounted the hood yesterday, the front edge is sitting about 3/8" above the surrounding body. Any suggestions on how to get the hood to align properly with the body.
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Re: 1968 Hood Hinges
My original 68 hinges have a few shims on one side and none on the other but rest on the fiberglass.Last edited by Jack C.; May 7, 2009, 04:55 PM.Jack Corso
1972 Elkhart Green LT-1 Coupe 43,200 miles
Top Flight 1994, 2018 & 2021Comment
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Re: 1968 Hood Hinges
Thank you, Joe and Jack for your replies. So it looks like someone (Bubba?) cut away the fiberglass inner fenders to allow the hinge bases to sit directly on the supports. No shims were on either side when the hood was removed. Since the hinges are already on the steel supports, I'm puzzled as to how to get the thing down to sit flush with the rest of the body. It's very close at the rear of the hood, but that front edge isn't even tolerably close!!Comment
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Re: 1968 Hood Hinges
I've seen that form of deviation once before... It was on a '70 that was in a front end collision very early in its life.
The reason I say the must have been wrecked earlie in its life is the front clip components used to effect repair were Rockwell glass panels that had their original, embedded, ID labels repleat with date codes from the mid-late 1971 era...
The forward hood hinges were mounted directly onto the underlying metal with the overlaying fiberglass trimmed away to lower the profile of the hood w.r.t. surrounding front clip components. Even then, there was an appreciable alignment mis-match along adjacent body panel seam lines...
The owner tried for a LONG time to understand why the various panels didn't fit and finally took the car to local Corvette body/paint specialist. There were a number of reasons for the mis-alignment; basically a comedy of errors!
(1) Replacement inner fenders were bonded to the outer fenders WITHOUT installing the foam skirt seals (affected the spacing of outer to inner fenders).
(2) Radiator core support inner fender skirt reinforcements were incorrect and improperly located.
(3) Radiator core support was improperly shimmed to the frame.
(4) The frame had been bent and improperly straightened.
I think there were a few other 'oops' issues, but that's enough right there to create a gross body panel mis-alignment!
The owner essentially had two choices:
(1) Disassemble the front clip and re-do the prior repairs from scratch.
(2) Remove the existing hood hinges had 'custom' fabricate a set of hinges for the car to function with the mis-aligned body panels.
The owner opted for the second alternative to save money...Comment
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Re: 1968 Hood Hinges
Jack,
Thanks for the information! Not the kind of thing I necessarily wanted to hear, but it makes sense in terms of what I'm looking at. The rest of the front fender alignment seems OK, no evidence of frame damage, core support has not, to my knowledge, ever been removed from the car. Looks like some "custom" hinges may be the way to go. Now I just have to try to explain this to the car's owner....Comment
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