62 Hood Pull

[Stuart F.]

Thought my son would post this, but guess he's too busy (flying today).

My son just bought a nice "Top Flighted" 62 Fuelie for his collection and the first time he went to pop the hood he pulled the release handle and it came off in his hand. The car is a tailer queen so has not seen much driving or use of late.

Does anyone know a quick way to open the hood on a C-1 and/or a good fix for this? We asked around at the show yesterday, but there were only a handful of C-1 owners including our Ed Augustine. He explained the tried and true method of getting to the latches from underneath.

It seems like the hood pull has 2 cables in it (one for each side) and I have no idea how the handle was attached to them, but perhaps super glue will do the trick, Ha!

Stu Fox

[Dan B.]

Re: 62 Hood Pull

Stu,
You can get the hood open with a pair of vise grips. Wrap a cloth or some tape around the cable's end threads to protect them then give a pull and the hood will open as normal. A permanent fix (but not NRCS correct) would be to cross drill the old handle and put a very small roll pin in there to prevent this from happening again. Dan

[Stuart F.]

Re: 62 Hood Pull

Dan;

Thanks. Using a vice grips would be my first choice too. The car is in my son's rental garage and I doubt he has moved his tool boxes there as yet. I know I have a set of grips in many sizes myself and they can come in handy now and then.I'll pass this on to him as maybe he will listen if another source tells him so.

Stu fox

[Donald H.]

Re: 62 Hood Pull

The same thing happened to me on my 1960. The release assembly was a reproduction one and I didn't think to lube it before I installed it. Over a few months it got harder to pull/open. Finally I pulled the handle off. I used the vice grip technique with my son pulling with the vice grips and me pushing down on the hood latch area. I ended up replacing the assembly with a new one. That was the fastest and easiest solution.

of course I lubed the new on generously before I installed it.

[Stuart F.]

Re: 62 Hood Pull

Thanks Don for the good tips. Never thought to help by pushing down on the hood.

Stu Fox