I am going to make the nose of my Fiat a tilt nose and I would like to see some examples of how some of you guys may have made yours work. (Bracing, Hinges, ect.) or maybe you just have a good idea for making it work and look nice. thanks in advance for your help.
another thread....lots of neat info on tilt front ends. If the link doesn't take you there, the front end posts start around post #2011 http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=822149&page=101
Many 46-48 GM cars had extra long hoods and marginal hood springs and mechanisms. I ran into this on my 47 Olds build and quickly figured out opening the hood as designed made it near impossible to access the 461 inch BB Olds inside. I determined to do a forward tilt hood to improve access and leave fenders and grille in place. If you've ever seen the way the front fenders on these cars align with the fender extensions you'd understand why in a heartbeat. To start with I bought a cheap 'universal' front tilt mechanism probably intended for something like a 50s-70s pickup. Mocking up showed the dimensions weren't anywhere near close. but the layout of the whole kit provided some starting points. A lot more hours and revisions than I thought it would take but finally it works and holds hood alignment with the fenders which was never great to start with. A couple of points, 1. in order for the nose of the hood to not hit the grille the whole mechanism has to slide forward about 4-6 inches and then pivot from a point roughly in line with the radiator. We had to rework our tilt mechanism a lot to get that. 2. Those long and wide hoods flop around a lot and need stiffening to hold alignment --particularly on the way down. 3. The hood needs help going up unless you have a couple of friends to help you open it every time. I decided to use a fairly inexpensive gas pressure strut and had to play around a lot to locate it so it did the job plus held up the hood. 4. Opening is easy. Closing is more difficult because you are fighting the pressure of the gas strut and you have to reverse the direction of the mechanism that allowed the tilt in order to get the hood back to the cowl. As the hood goes back it wants to stay too high and needs a capture mechanism plus a rail on either side it can glide along to get back in closed position. The result was a kind of monkey-motion setup you can see in the pics. It works but I think it would be a heck of a lot better if I could engineer a linear actuator and mount that would take the muscle out of the equation and do away with the gas strut. Jerry
I am using square tube, angle iron with nuts and bolts. It bolts to the frame and bolts to the front end. The bracket slides forward with spring loaded pins as stops and the hinge tilts it. If I want to completely remove the front end I just push the pins down and pull. I don't want to weld it or the front end. I know this thread is a few months old but maybe it can help you or anyone else........................best of luck, Mike
I'm just finishing up mine on a Henry J. I used heim joints for hinges and 7/8 X 14 ga wall round tubing for the frame( the tubing fits a 3/4 EMT conduit bender). Blue
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