Hood Springs

[riverdogs00]

Group,

I looked and saw a few threads on Hood springs but wanted to share what I found and what worked for me. Maybe this will help others.

I bought new springs as my OE's were crusty and I had new Repop hinges. Tried to put springs on hinges in a vise, ultimately installed after I mounted the hinges in car using the prybar method. One thing I noticed is that the coil to hook end transition on the repos is different than the OE's. On the OE, the top of the coil travels about half way across the diameter of the coil before it goes vertical.  The repops do not do this, and as a result I had some interference with the hinge and ended up swapping the spring end for end to get it to work properly.

On my car, I cut a hole in the hood and thereby lost a lot of rigidity. Closing was a delicate balance of shimmying side to side so I did not bend the hood. I bought a pair of lower tension springs for a fiberglass hood and then promptly spent a day looking at the repops  installed on the hinges, on the car trying to find a way to get them off without a  prybar.  I tried the rope/vbelt trick where you loop in onto the hooked end, but found I was not strong enough in my old age to pull it off. I chose not to do the stacked washers method.

  What did work, and worked very well was this.  I opened the hood and measured the spring end to end with it as small as it was going to be on the car (hood all the way open). Then I closed the hood 3/4 of the way and measured. There was about 2-3 inch length difference .   I took some steel tube I had (about 7/16 of 1/2 diameter) and cut to just under my 3/4 closed measurement.   I flattened the ends with a hammer, and notched them with my bench grinder.  Inserted into the springs, lined up the notches and opened the hood.  The springs fell off.  So easy.   Installation would be the reverse. I left the tubes in the repop springs, and will make installation easier if/when I use them.

I then used the rope trick on my low tension springs;  hooked the firewall end of the spring on the perch, ran a rope through the other end and simply stretched the spring onto the forward perch. See pics....after the fact of course ha

[Paul D Valle]

Great idea! 

Much better than using a come a long attached to a tree😃

[cny first gen 71]

I thought about making a tool for that but I just had the experts put on new springs when rebuilding the old hinges. Glad I went that way for sure.