Hello

I have a -92 auto which has the most poor hood fitting that I have ever seen before on a C4. In short words: It really looks like ****. From what I have gathered, the poor fitting comes from the car being at a paint shop some years ago. While there they took the hood off but never got it fitted properly again.

The right side of the hood fits quite okay all way, but the left is a real mess.

Is it difficult (something you can do yourself?) to refit it and what would be the worst consequences of a possible failure? I have heard that the hood can latch doing the refit and then be very difficult to get open again if you aligned it wrong.

I will try to get some pictures of this later today so you can get a good laugh at this.

Thankful for any info!
Sincerely
Krille

 

My concern when I installed the hood on my 89 (it was off when I bought the car) was that it would chip more of the front edge of the hood when closing it if it got under the edge of the front bumper.

It seemed pretty straight forward as far as adjusting goes. The four studs that the hood bolts onto (that go into the hing brackets) has some room for front/back adjusting and that is where I did all my 'tweaking' to line it up. Side to side was OK but if needed I think the hinges can be adjusted where they mount to the frame. Minor changes can make big differences at the rear of the hood so take it slow and mark things for reference points like the current hing locations on the hood/frame.

I still have the problem though where the front bumper to hood gap is very close at the center of the hood and the gap is 1/2 inch at each side. I'm hoping I can make an adjustment to the bumper to correct that.

 

plan on bout 4 hours, dont make big adjustments, mine aligned quicker after I removed the pins and springs, and then reinstalled them after the hood was aligned, didnt have to fight them and the hood at the same time

 

possible...measure extended heights and then remove both the 'male' parts of the latches from the hood (one ea side) while making major adjustments...after hood is aligned, degrease the female (cowl mounted) bottom part of the latch and use two short pieces of masking tape in an 'X' across the hole in each female body (ignore the internal slider inside the females that actually catches the males to latch in)..screw just ONE male latch back into the hood, restoring previously measured extended height...put a dab of your lady's lipstick or slow-drying paint on the tip of the male and slowly lower the hood until the lipstick/paint/etc end of the male just barely touches the tape 'x' target on the female latch (can't see in there to do this, use multiple 'lower/lower/lower' hood down attempts until minimal contact occurs)...raise hood to full open/safety latch 'up' and observe transferred lipstick/paint spot on tape 'x', if correct the spot will be centered over the female hole...if adjustment is req'd, degrease the hood around the male latch assy and apply small strips of masking tape at the edges of the male latch assy for position reference before loosening the three bolts that hold the male assy to the hood and moving the male assy (holes in the male assy are over-sized to allow adjustment)...repeat 'spotting check' until centering of male in female is perfect...install other male into hood and 'x'/lipstick/etc align same as prior side.

 

Seems like this woud be the first step and a smart way to start out from scratch.



This would be step 2. Good info and a lot of details.

There are some other latch threads lately in the Forum with different methods and approaches.