wildsailor
This Club for me?
- Joined
- Mar 29, 2015
- Threads
- 8
- Messages
- 472
- Reaction score
- 164
- Location
- SE Michigan
- First Name
- Dan
- Vehicle(s)
- 2015 Ecoboost
- Thread starter
- #1
Like most people, my hood has that telltale 'dip' in the leading edge that misaligns it to the front facia. Here is my before picture and the dip clearly showing in the middle is quite evident.
My hood, from day one, was also very hard to close. Dropping it from about 3' works but the 'dip' and the closing difficulty may actually be related. That was the going in theory anyway. Is the latch too low?
Here is the latch and the two mounting studs do not appear to have adjustment slots. Nonetheless, I tried moving it up first. I loosened the two nuts (10 mm) and closed the hood to the safety latch and then pulled upward to bring the latch up as far as it would go. I then reopened the hood and retightened the two nuts. There was no change in hood closing force or the visible 'dip.' I can see why owners are being told by their dealers that the hood cannot be adjusted to get rid of the dip. The latch is already all the way up.
Well, there is always another way. 'Raise the river or lower the bridge' so to speak. So, the other side is the old traditional bent bar style latch thingy.
So, I scrounged and found some stainless steel washers in my garage from boat projects. The plan was to remove the nuts (again 10 mm) and insert the washers behind the bar to lower it and, in effect, raise the hood. I started off with three washers on each stud.
The unpainted hood under the bar is now evident. This is not a very attractive way to do this. The best way to fix this is to be able to raise the latch but it appears to already be at the top of its adjustment. Obviously there is a positional stack up issue with the latch position on the body crossmenber.
The immediate result to adding the washers was that the hood closed very easily. About what you would expect a hood to close like. As for the alignment.... well, it is clearly better, but my hood alignment is still off.
It almost now looks like the center is lower than the ends because closing it with the latch too low may have caused it to take a weird set. Obviously I need to play with it some more but it is definitely going in the right direction. I will keep at it but I wanted to get this out to the rest of the members in case you wanted to try something similar.
My hood, from day one, was also very hard to close. Dropping it from about 3' works but the 'dip' and the closing difficulty may actually be related. That was the going in theory anyway. Is the latch too low?
Here is the latch and the two mounting studs do not appear to have adjustment slots. Nonetheless, I tried moving it up first. I loosened the two nuts (10 mm) and closed the hood to the safety latch and then pulled upward to bring the latch up as far as it would go. I then reopened the hood and retightened the two nuts. There was no change in hood closing force or the visible 'dip.' I can see why owners are being told by their dealers that the hood cannot be adjusted to get rid of the dip. The latch is already all the way up.
Well, there is always another way. 'Raise the river or lower the bridge' so to speak. So, the other side is the old traditional bent bar style latch thingy.
So, I scrounged and found some stainless steel washers in my garage from boat projects. The plan was to remove the nuts (again 10 mm) and insert the washers behind the bar to lower it and, in effect, raise the hood. I started off with three washers on each stud.
The unpainted hood under the bar is now evident. This is not a very attractive way to do this. The best way to fix this is to be able to raise the latch but it appears to already be at the top of its adjustment. Obviously there is a positional stack up issue with the latch position on the body crossmenber.
The immediate result to adding the washers was that the hood closed very easily. About what you would expect a hood to close like. As for the alignment.... well, it is clearly better, but my hood alignment is still off.
It almost now looks like the center is lower than the ends because closing it with the latch too low may have caused it to take a weird set. Obviously I need to play with it some more but it is definitely going in the right direction. I will keep at it but I wanted to get this out to the rest of the members in case you wanted to try something similar.
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