11 hours ago, wheee! said:

I also removed my torsion bars and hinges as a single unit.

Me too. All the (two times) hood torsion work I've done has been OFF the car. There's no way I would ever ever try to put those things together on the car!

I watched the video. There's a lot of mechanical amplification in the hinges, and that translates to any slop in the holes as well.

I think you should take the hinges back off and mess with them on the bench.

Ha, I tried putting the rods in with the hinges off the car, but the whole thing kept falling apart on me, so I just went the muscle route instead. Granted, it wasn't easy.

Since there's clearly something amiss that's not explained by me forcing parts together in the wrong way, I'll pull out the rods and hinges today. There may be nothing I can do to fix the hinges (they seem very unserviceable), so I might just do as the PO did and leave the rods out until I can replace the hinges.

 

May I suggest this instead?

I considered struts when I thought my rods were long gone. Maybe one day, but I don't think they'll help with this problem:

A little tough to film with one hand and move with the other, but there's a fair amount of play that translates to vertical movement of the hood, and side-to-side slop. I only filmed one, but both hinges are basically the same. I thought they had a little more play than they should, and the rods would tighten it up (true enough, I suppose, even if the result isn't quite what I want), but I gather from the comments that these hinges are properly shot.

I can't recall seeing any documentation on rebuilding the hinges (which I suppose would require drilling out and re-riveting everything), so replacement is likely the only reasonable option here?

Send a message to Jim @zKars 

I’m sure he has a set in good shape!

1 minute ago, wheee! said:

Send a message to Jim @zKars 

I’m sure he has a set in good shape!

Maybe. Most of them have loose joints, but there should be a couple of decent ones. My hood had the same issue, though not so bad. I removed the torsion bars, should have done the hydraulic lift mod. Next one!

Worn pins/rivets are very common. I'm sure the holes they pass through are worn oval as well. Would be great to come up with some replacement rivets! You'd have to grind the heads off of these, likely weld up/redrill the worn holes and re-assemble. I'll have to take my worst one and oper 'er up and see "where the wear" really is.

Strange as my set feel like brand new off the ‘76

Just picked up a set on eBay for <$50 shipped that was described as "smooth movement, tight, not twisted" which are all the things mine are not.

Worst case, I'll have a set I can disassemble and see what would be involved in a rebuild.

Sweet deal! Good luck.

Put them on the car and adjust them before you paint them to see if you can get them adjusted properly. Did you try loosing the hood bolts (not the hinge bolts) and pushing the hood down then re-tightening? I know I have had the same issue and gotten rid of it. So I believe it's possible

So here's my take on the whole thing... The hinges only have one "stop" that is used in application, and that's a stop to limit the fully OPEN position. There is no stop to limit the closed position. The only stop to limit the closed position is the hood latch. And all the springs do is constantly apply force to try to open the hood. They don't do anything to control position, just apply a force in a direction that will preload the springs toward one side (the open direction).

When you run without springs, that preload is gone and the hood will (may? can?) ride lower depending on how much play there is in the hinges. The spring preload will first take up all that looseness and (once the slop is all loaded to one direction) will then apply force to open the hinges. Of course, some slop is required because the hinge has to pivot, but if you have too much, you will run out of adjustment range on the mounting holes.

After watching the video, that hinge looks really sloppy and I believe the assessments above that the hinges are worn and you have run out of adjustment range. Once you get yourself a replacement set of hinges that are tighter, you could open up one of the old ones and look at the ovaled holes and worn pins. That would probably be some neat pics.