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 (until I was able, through a manual âassistâ from the front, to back her off that âsummitâ ).
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 driverâs side of the front bumper cover (by the front side marker light) being pushed âoutâ a few inches from that light assembly. 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 (driverâs) side of the midline. Fortunately, it missed messing up the radiator or its supports, but, in his own words, it somehow managed to âsquashâ (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.
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 driverâs side edge of the bonnet appeared to stick up a fraction of an inch above the level of the driverâs 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.
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 driverâs side hood latch latched and would NOT reopen. He ended up removing the hood hinges completely on their non-hood side to eventually get it to open again and save the day. 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.
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 driverâs side latch. In order to drive around w/o risk of my hood flying up, I disconnected one of the hood struts (driverâs side) to keep the hood down by its own weight. Looks funny (or even âprecariousâ), but it works for now.
Question is, did the curb collision actually somehow change my hoodâs 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? 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. ?