Any proceedure or advice for adjusting the hood on my 55.1 chevy truck, the truck has been completly disasemlbed, I have hung the front fenders, radiator support etc. I have been fighting with the hood for a day and I can get it close but when I install the springs the back of the hood raises everything goes out of wack. The hinges are original as are the springs, they are in good shape and the hood fit fine before the truck was disasembled.
AD Hood (not) Fun Bob ; This is really cpmmon problem and I'm not good at explaining it but it's been covered in close detail many times over , look in the archives under " hood " and " hood adjusment " , " hood gap " etc.
When you adjust the hood you have to put a 4"-6" spacer under the front of the hood. I'm kinda ahead of myself, first take your springs loose, and losen your hinges. I put thin rags along the back of the hood to keep from chippin paint and blue tape everywhere else it may make contact. Now just aline it and you will now have tension on the back of the hood. Chris
Thanx Chris ! The deal is Bob ; The large weight of that long hood tends to tilt the hinges on the wrong direction so supporting the front of it allows the rear part to sit correctly . I assume you've found the hinge bolts inside the cab by now .
Thanks for all the info, I did not have a 54 shop manual (my bad) only the assembly manual. I the shop manual has very good adjustment procedure that I am sure would work on any of the older trucks with the same type hinges. I did buy new hinges the old ones had enough wear to cause the hood to raise even after following the shop manual procedure. Now the hood fits tight and level at the cowl. The hood gap on the sides of the cowl is wider on the drivers side than I would like it to be. Since I had the truck all apart I am sure there is an alignment issue that I have overlooked. As someone reminded me, these old trucks were not that detailed when they were new. This is the second frame off restoration that I have done and each time I forget how aggravating it can become. Everything looks easy until you have to do it yourself.
Me too! Bob I had exactly the same problem with my 55.1 - closing the hood it raises up at the back. Taking the springs off it sat down fine, all the way around, but with the springs in, the back just sat up enough to put my hand inside (front and sides still good). After a whole bunch of time adjusting the hinges with the 4" - 6" lift at the front method, it's now still a long way from perfect but much better. In the end just two things made the difference (1) new hinges, the original hinges had a lot of play in the joints which the new ones don't so that helped and (2) shimming the hinges outwards (1/4" plus a bit), making the hood that little bit wider also pulls it flatter. There were some AD's from the GM Heritage Collection at the ATHS (http://www.aths.org/) convention last year and I gotta tell you they didn't fit that well either. It's true what everyone says about the fit on these even when new.
I have a 1954 and been having a bear of a time with the hood/fender alignment. I was reading that the cab needs to be level and one post on another site stated 1 7/8 inches frame to cab hieght. I have the auto trans and at that height the front of the cab rests on the trans closest to the engine, so I have two rubber cab mount pads on the front mount which puts me at 2 3/8 inch...what should the correct frame to cab floor height be? I also beleive if I keep it at that height I will need to shim the radiator core support equally with the fron cab mounts to keep the front of the fenders and hood level...any ideas? Thanks in advance
