I am having a problem with my hood hitting the cowl when I first start to open it. The hood moves rearward and hits the cowl when I first start to open it even with a very large gap to start with. I bought new hinges and that did not help at all. It looks like the firewall wall flexes quite a bit. What am I missing? The hood/cowl gap looks like ****, way too large and the hood still hits.
Firewall shouldn't be flexing, at least none of my '55-9's ever did, I wonder if it's rusty/crusty? Anyway, how good are the springs? will the hood stay just about all the way up?
I have had two 57 trucks that had really poor welding on the firewall, the seam where the upper cowl meets the lower firewall was barely spot welded on one side of the truck. Might be a cause of some flexing? but also I have good original hood hinges, which helps...I'm not too keen on the quality of most repop parts for these trucks. Pictures would sure help us help you figure out what's wrong.
I have these billet hinges, work great, but spendy ($649). Doesn't sound like they will solve your problem though. http://www.cl***icparts.com/1955-57-Billet-Hood-Hinges-Polished-pr/productinfo/38-482B/#.VsRuV_krKUk don
after 50 years of opening and closing the hood , the fire wall is probably slightly bent in at the bottom from the weight of the hood ,I shimed the bottom bolts of the hinge where it meets the firewall with a couple of washers, barley noticeable ,and works like a dream now
Is your 55 an early production truck? My 55 pickup was built in the first 3 weeks of production and the fit of the doors, fenders and hood was awful. There literally was a 1/2 inch gap where the doors curve under the front windshield posts. It also had many spot welds in the wrong places. I just figured that all of this was because the body jigs had problems when the cab was first ***embled. Since it was built so early, Chevrolet just hadn't worked out all of the problems with all of the new tooling, body panel stamping machines, etc.
I've owned several of the 55-59 trucks, and all of them have a 1/2" gap at the front of the p*** side door below the windshield. And the gap on the driver side is fine. That's just part of the character of these trucks.
Squirrel is right- trucks, in general, suffer from bad panel fit, but the TF's are notorious for having all kinds of fit issues, p*** door, the front top of the doors, etc. Gotta remember that these were built for hard work first, looks second.
Actually, it was both doors. When I first rebuilt this truck, it seemed to be very poorly put together. After it was totaled, I bought a new cab for it, from a 1959 grain truck. The quality of the 59 cab was immensely higher than the original 55 cab. The same goes for the 59 GMC that I'm currently building. The fit of the doors, fenders, etc. on the GMC is very good. Not as good as the p***enger cars, but much, much better than how the original 55 was.
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