Finally stuck my 280 hood on the '73 and it latches, but the passenger side (that's the right) corner near the cowl is an inch above the fender and cowl when the hood is latched. The 240 hood that came off lined up perfectly, and the donor car (another 240) the vented hood came off--everything lined up great there too. Everything LOOKS straight and the car has never been in any wrecks. The hinge bolts are basically in the middle of their range. The front corners at the headlight buckets lines up great. Not perfect, but good enough. I don't see enough adjustment in the hinges to clear this problem up, and RAISING the front LEFT corner to drop the rear right would cause it to be horribly out. Is there a trick? Is my hood tweaked? Is my body tweaked?

steve77

And NO, the right rear bump stop is not up in the way. It is down where it should be and there is an inch between it and the hood.

steve77

What about the side to side clearance? I'm wondering if it might be hung up on one of the side bumpers or the inspection lid?

I checked all that and the bumpers seem to be clear and the inspection lids are definitely out of the way. Everything is down flush EXCEPT for the bone-nit.

steve

Well, hmmm, if'n that's the case, I'd be more tempted to guess maybe the front end is tweaked a little. More than likely, in fornt of the rad support, where the bumper could have taken a little shot and pushed the whole thing donw just enough to cause the tension rod to put more pressure on the hood hinge than is necessary and that could be causing your problem.

Did you try lining it up without the hood hinge tension rods installed? Just wondering if there might be enough movement in the hinge mounting plate, where you could line up the rear of the hood first with it latched, then line up the front of the hood with the hood mounting bolts on the hinge, then hook up the rods last.

Try "tweaking" it in the opposite direction.

Open the hood, stand infrom to the car, grab the edges with both hands and give it a good "tweak" on the opposide direction. (ie, twist/bend it straight).

It's probably too late for this but can you try fitting your original bonnet to the donor car. In theory it should fit with the reverse problem.

Alan.