I am just curious, did the hoods on these cards (mine is a 56) ever shut without manually sliding the hood latch to lock it? Since I have had mine I always had to push the hood down and slide the latch to lock it, but I wondered if it ever did, or was supposed to, be able to just close the hood and it latch itself. Not sure if I need to adjust mine or rebuild, or if its meant to be that way.
My 54 doesn't have to be manually latched. This maybe the one thing that works perfectly on mine. I would say it sounds like you have a worn out spring.
Ok cool. My latch takes a good effort to pull and latch..i will take it apart and see if i can get it freed up. Basically when i open my hood the latch stays in that position until i manually pull it back. I ***ume the latch should automatically go back to its original position after you open the hood
You are missing a small spring that pulls the lever back into the "locked" position. I am too - mine popped off a while back but I just haven't gotten around to replacing it yet.
I do have the spring I looked up under there and saw it last night. The lever is really tight..it just grinds when you move it. The spring probably is shot to but i am thinking as hard as it is to slide the lever j need to take apart and see why its binding
The lever pin might have gotten rusty, I would try spraying some penetrating oil or anti seize up into the latch lever and work it back and forth until it moves freely.
Got her working beautifully now. I took that latch off the car, the slider piece was dragging real bad, bent a little. Straightened as much as I could, did a tad of filing on it, and closes and opens like a dream. Cool! My dad had this car since the 70's and said its never latched by itself, which is why I asked yall if it was supposed to. Good to be back working on the car again, January would have been 2 years since I had it
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