Bonnet Closing/Fastening Woes

I mentioned previously on here how I unfortunately managed last summer to drive Superblue up on an unmarked curb in a public park parking lot, w. her ending up stranded atop same :rage: (until I was able, through a manual “assist” from the front, to back her off that “summit” :relieved: ).

At the time, and up until last week, I thought I very fortunately avoided damaging anything underneath Superblue as the result of that incident, other than her black plastic belly plate becoming dislodged, and the driver’s side of the front bumper cover (by the front side marker light) being pushed “out” a few inches from that light assembly. :pray: However, when a friend of mine was under Superblue for the first time since then, looking for the source of my new PS fluid leak, he gave me the unfortunate news that Superblue did not apparently escape serious injury as I had hoped: there was a a sizeable dent into the front of her frame, on the left (driver’s) side of the midline. :open_mouth: Fortunately, it missed messing up the radiator or its supports, but, in his own words, it somehow managed to “squash” (or shift or push) things in that area to the right (i.e. toward the passenger side). This is probably b/c I was in the process of making a slight arcing turn to the right when I hit the curbing, @ about 10-15 mph. :grimacing:

Ever since that impact I have had trouble with the hood closing properly. It would in fact at first latch closed on both sides, although the driver’s side edge of the bonnet appeared to stick up a fraction of an inch above the level of the driver’s side fender. The gap between the two also appeared to be slightly wider than that between the passenger side of the bonnet and the fender on that side. The passenger side hood latch would latch with difficulty at first, w. a sensation like there was pressure being exerted to push the hood upward in that area. After a few weeks of acting like that, it eventually got to where I could not get the passenger side of the hood to lay down flat and engage the latch at all on that side. :angry:

I did find another friend of mine, a semi-retired tech (although not a bodyman) who spent about three hours on the problem, removing the grill and loosening the hood hinges to try to get things lined up again. He noted by looking at the hinges that they had shifted position (apparently from the curb strike) b/c he could see the old outline of same where they originally mated to the surface they were attached to. At one point during this process the driver’s side hood latch latched and would NOT reopen. :open_mouth: He ended up removing the hood hinges completely on their non-hood side to eventually get it to open again and save the day. :disappointed_relieved: After apparently relining things up like they should be, he was able to get both latches to again latch, although again with that upward pressure or torsion on the passenger side. :thinking:

Fast forward after a few openings of the hood, and the passenger side latch became inoperative again. A couple of weeks later, ditto for the driver’s side latch. In order to drive around w/o risk of my hood flying up, I disconnected one of the hood struts (driver’s side) to keep the hood down by its own weight. Looks funny (or even “precarious”), but it works for now. :blush:

Question is, did the curb collision actually somehow change my hood’s geometry? More importantly, will I ever be able to get it close normally again? Or, will I have to find a body shop with one of those frame alignment machines and have them pull out the front frame dent as best as possible first? :confused: The tech opined that he thought he could still get it close properly once again, although he was talking something about putting a 2 x 4 under the passenger side edge of the hood and yanking it upward while held closed, I guess to counteract the torsion condition created and existing on same. ?

Hello Paul - I do not understand the correlation between the topic title and your paragraph above and what are you stating or asking - did your bonnet get misaligned during the front push help therefore now having problems correctly closeing and locking - Tex.

If it got misaligned, it had to be have been from the collision itself (dent to the front of the frame). The manual assist was basically just a friend of mine pushing against the front bumper with his back while I reved Superblue in reverse gear. I had gotten tired of waiting for AAA to come rescue me off the cub with their truck (wench) at the time, and my friend thought we could free it ourselves, and looks like he was right. :+1:

A couple thoughts -

With the strikers removed, and front hinges unbolted, will the bonnet sit perfectly closed aka pre-accident condition?

If you haven’t tried this, I would suggest you do, with the help of your buddy - obviously remove the struts too - the point of the exercise to see if the bonnet itself was bent.

If it wasn’t, chances are the front hinges need to be replaced.

Second - you said the frame is bent - please elaborate. The frame being the subframe for the suspension, or the frame where the front bumper et al attaches? If the latter, before doing anything, I would suggest you take it to a frame specialist and see if it’s twisted up front, to the point that the hinge attachment points are bent, which of course could mean that the front core support and adjacent bits also moved. Removing the front bumper will also help to investigate the geometry.

Sorry to hear about this…

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Will check that all out, Jeff, and thanks … ! :smiley_cat:

Well, had yet another “home tech” take a look at it, and in his opinion what happened is when I ran Superblue up on that unmarked curb, denting in her lower radiator support arm, it slightly raised the radiator as a result. :thinking: So, the reason the hood is having a hard time coming down all the way closed (and seems to have upward “pressure” to it on the passenger side by the latch end when coming down close to the latch) is that the hood is actually contacting the radiator at that point (well, he said there’s a rubber strip on top at that contact point, IIRC), according to him. I’m going to find some Pla Doh later today and put a small amount (wad) on the high point of the radiator and see if any of it is flattened and/or gets on the underside of the hood when I attempt to close it, to confirm that theory.

If it turns out that is what’s happening, I don’t know whether r/ring the support arm will put things back in place for sure (one tech says the arm is held in place with 4 Phillips head screws, this one says it is bolted in place, btw ? :confused: ). He does opine that, by using a bottle jack or something called a “friction jack” (?) the support may be pulled down a bit at the location of the dent and the radiator with it, problem solved. Does that sound plausible? :confused: As a slight “fix”, he did try jumping up and down on the front bumper with his fully body weight (about 200 lbs.) and that action did seem to improve things slightly.

On my 96, that radiator support is a very robust piece of steel that seems to do more than simply support a radiator. It is welded in place!

If you had a camera like a GoPro, or could set up your phone in the right spot you could probably see what was happening as well. Playdoh works too.

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Yep, got some tonight, and about to try it now … Will report back soon …

Well, tested, and Superblue did not pass the Pla-Doh method – the thin “patty” of PD flattened out a bit when the hood was closed, showing that the hood in fact is making contact with the top of the radiator. :disappointed: So, that is in fact why the hood is having issues latching closed and wanting to “rise up” a bit on the passenger side when getting close to closed on that side. :thinking:

So, I now need to know just how far up the radiator is in the air from where it should be located. I would ask a favor of anyone with a '94 4.0 (or '93, I guess?) to measure from the highest point on their radiator straight down to the ground below the engine bay, and let me know the measurement. I’m thinking Equip has (2?) '94s, so taking those two measurements, if very close to each other, should, when averaged, yield what the correct radiator height should be (to compensate for any slight differences in ride height). Equip (and others?) would you please do that for me? :pleading_face: Thanks! :smiley_cat:

Some options still exist before major surgery:

The best solution is of course to remove the radiator and either have a frame shop pull it down into place or conversely, you can use a BFH to hammer down on the support.

Options for not removing radiator:

The rubber gasket on the radiator core support is generally pretty thick, so removing it entirely or in a chunk, to allow the bonnet to close, may work just fine - HOWEVER (!!!), that gasket is cushioning the core support and bonnet from one another, so before removing and subsequently closing the bonnet, you HAVE to make sure there is dead space between the the core support and the bonnet, or that metal on metal contact will definitely imprint into the bottom side and push a nasty dent up.

Second option, in the same location, is to remove the core support and cut the flange down, with a Dremel, that the gasket crimps to. This would then give you up to another 1/2”+ of clearance between the bonnet and the radiator core support, thus allowing the bonnet to relax shut as usual.

If the left side is okay just measure it.

I wondered about the rubber gasket method (removing), and even the tech did as well. :thinking: Thanks for the ideas … btw, what is a “BFH” ? :confused:

Big Friggen Hammer :wink:

Ah, I get it now … :laughing:

Hammer won’t work. That steel support is very robust. It is doing a lot more than just supporting the radiator.

The bottom of the radiator has pegs that fit into holes in the support. There are rubber donuts that cushion the radiator, but still allow the pegs to make it’s way into the holes. It’s plausible that the pegs were not fitted into the holes, therefore the radiator could be standing taller than expected. Maybe the rubber donuts are too tall, or not compressing?

I’d take a closer look at how the bottom of the radiator is sitting on the support.

I think those rubber donuts are there (top and bottom):to also isolate/insulate the radiator

I’m not suggesting to remove the rubber donuts, although someone may have fitted a thicker donut at some point…

Sorry Vee. Wasn’t suggesting that you were. Just reminding readers that the rubber isolation mounts have a purpose. If removing radiator it us a good time to replace them