First the disclaimer, this Tech is an old tech I posted about 8 years ago, the photos on the old tech are all missing ( Evil Red X ) I found 3/4 of the photos & will add more words to the story. The car is long gone. I do not know why I have not seen many cars with this hood set-up, late 80's early 90's Buick hood hinges, I do not know what years (some real tech help here ) my doner was 89 LeSabre , I took the parts off at the u-pick yard, I had 8 Buicks to choose from, the one by the front gate worked for me, $25 for hood & hinges. There were some other cars that had forward flip hoods at the yard, 57 Ford has long torsion bar cross spring thingies, Edsel pivots looked huge and had a wound spring to lift the heavy Edsel hood and a firewall latch. Saab looked like a good choice, but I did not like the locating pins on the hood that go into the firewall. The Buick has a latch by the radiator support, pivot pins at the cowl of the hood, that hook into brackets on the firewall. The front hinge bar mounts flat on each side or the radiator. I like this swap 'cause you still use your stock latch on your car. Hood shut with Buick hinges Pull stock latch and hood pops up and slides forward, from the tension of the 2 springs. Grab hood and pivot forward. The Mets hood had no inner bracing, I used the Buick braces for the hood, welded them in and used the same 2 part foam to fill the gaps just like Buick did. If your hood has a good inner braces, you may not need the buick ones like I did. Ues your tape measure to guess where to place the hinge to avoid the front edge of the hood hitting bumper when fully open. I did not get a photo of the hinge rod before I started to butcher it up this will have to do. The first thing I did to the hinge rod (after I had a plan) was to hack the tube that tied the hinges together.Scribe a straight line on tube for alignment. A 1/2 inch od tube fit inside the hinge tube, so it car be telescoped to the right width for mocking up placement. I then tack welded the hinge to the car just for testing, when I was happy with the location, I put in a cage nuts & cut the tacks off. Here are the pivot pin and catch hook, before they got hacked up. 2 B continued Stay Tuned
This hook mounts to the top corners of the firewall. There is a secondary hook that I just cut off, took the hooks to a shop with a ironworker and they bent them length ways on the scribe mark, to give me a 90 deg mounting surface, try to see in next photo ( I am missing a few photos here) this photo is looking inside the hood when shut There is a shoulder bolt that goes into hook to hold the firewall edge down, here are photos of the mount I made for the bolt.
Clever adaption! Especially nice fabrication of the pin mounting bracket at the rear of the hood. Looks great. Ray
Great tech and fab work. For some reason I was expecting to see the hood open up sideways but thats kool too!
I am also using the 1990 Buick LaSabre hinge assembly for my 53 Ford Victoria. See: http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/threads/anybody-done-a-tilt-forward-hood.118772/#post-11548663 Thanks for this Post, I am sure I will be studying it for reference.
been like 15 years or so.. any idea when we guna get the continuation? Also, most of the pics are Red Xs now..
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