Springs

[Chuck Lutz]

I saw Barry's post on the Home "Despot" (very cute, by the way) spring replacements which reminded me that the big honkers on my trunk hinges are pretty weak. They look like a pretty basic catalog spring but not sure. Anyone have an idea of aftermarket springs for either the trunk or the hood?

[Nick DeSpirito]

Chuck,

I'm clueless on the trunk springs since my car has the torsion bars. They switched to the torsion bars in mid January of 1956. Barry will answer you on this since he has the scissor spring set up.

[Barry Wolk]

I saw Barry's post on the Home "Despot" (very cute, by the way) spring replacements which reminded me that the big honkers on my trunk hinges are pretty weak. They look like a pretty basic catalog spring but not sure. Anyone have an idea of aftermarket springs for either the trunk or the hood?

I doubt if you need new springs. However, I will see if I can get a description from the parts book.

You probably committed automotive equivalent of the Cardinal sin by oiling your hinges. Both trunk and hood hinges are friction held. I had some work done by a restoration shop. They oiled my hinges. They delivered the car back to me with a stick to hold the hood up.:mad:

Repeated applications of alcohol barely worked. I've used brake cleaner twice and it gets better every time. You need to rinse away the oil in the friction points.

[Barry Wolk]

Hmmmm...... Reading further, the hinges should be oiled. Maybe I have weak springs, too.

[Chuck Lutz]

I'll check if they were oiled. I know I never oiled them.
But the springs do help hold the trunk or hood up, right?

[Barry Wolk]

Yes, I believe that's correct.

[Barry Wolk]

Further reading reveals that worn hinge points are responsible for lots of marred paint jobs. The article suggests that an outward sign of hinge wear is either of both side of the hood at the cowl sticking up. It said that moving the hood up and down while observing each joint will reveal the worn rivet. The article warned of letting the condition get too bad as breakage of a hinge point can cause havoc.

The article suggests that the rivet can be replaced with a hardened shoulder bolt of a larger size as the holes are most likely oblong and will need to be made round again on their original centers.

[Mad Scientist]

I’m not sure that having oil free hinges is a good thing.

I had forgotten that the passenger side of my hood was sticking up about 3/8” when closed. Anyway the other week I needed to make a hole in the firewall to run a computer cable, by the way the engine is now fuel injected, but as a result I needed to remove the glove box and kick panel to get excess.

So at that point I figure as long as I also have excess to the two rear hinge bolts I might as well take a couple minute to readjust the hood. Two and half hours later I now have a hood that closes properly. To start with no amount of adjusting would make the hood close correctly. It eventually became apparent that the hinge was bent. This required removing the hinge from the car so as to place in a vice and with a pipe wrench do some precision straightening. Naturally one cannot simple just remove the hinge you first have to remove a fresh air hose and its coupling.

At any rate it is now all back together and working. But what I figure happened was the hinge partially froze up due to a lack of oil thus when the hood was closed something had to give and that something was the bending of the hinge.:(

At this point I would say that the use of a prop stick, if needed, to hold the hood open is preferable to having to repair that hinge. Of course if you do need a prop stick that means that the springs have lost their strength and should be replaced. However I’m not sure how one would go about casually removing and replacing them.

[Nick DeSpirito]

I had my hinges rebuilt last winter. It was done by a place in upstate NY. I don't remember the name. What they do is replace the rivets. When they came back, they said the driver's side spring is weak. Well, in my opinion, if you're doing a rebuild, that would include new springs too, no? It was supposed to be a 4-6 week turnaround that ultimately turned into two and a half months. They said the reason for the delay was they were waiting for the rivets to come in. :eek:

Anyway, my hood stayed up before the rebuild, but i could tell it was not firmly up and the back was not flush with the cowl when closed. I can feel the difference when I open it now. It seems to lock in place when open and it is now flush with the cowl when closed.

[Chuck Lutz]

My friend and I were talking yesterday (yes, the one with 2 MKII's and has only registered here but not yet filled out the profile. Sorry, Sam) about his car being at the shop to align and adjust the hood near the rear corners at the cowl. That has been bugging him lately as the corners are up in relationship the the other body metal.
After the forum's banter about past experiences and rebuilds of hinges I told him it probably wouldn't work. "Why not?" he asked. I followed with the invaluable knowlege learned here and responded "the hinges have too much play in the the holes and that 3 point sissor hinges with only minimal hole deformation will probably result in exponential mis-alignment". Some of you here have indicated that.
So he came back with, "So I should just order new one?" Then the wheels in my head started to turn and I told him I'd like to take them apart and really see what's going on. I should also say that I have a metal fabrication shop that doesn't do automotive AT ALL but with all this at my disposal and a thirst for forensic automotive science.. (too much CSI) I wanted to see what 50 + years of hood raising does.
What a lesson we learned. Turns out that the flat head rivets aren't really flat head rivits but "shoulder rivits". You know like shoulder bolt but with a flat head, not countersunk but disk like. So the rivits that we had weren't even close.
I should also say that removing the springs are like an out of body experience. Don't take this part ligthly. Even the the "neutral" position they are under serious tension. We drove wedges between coils to lenghten the coil and it still took lots of prying to get them off. I'd suggust a safety clamp over the coil before messing with it. That way if something pops loose at least it won't crawl up your face.
There are two major rivets that take most of the forces. (See the picture below) These areas showed the most elogation of the metal stampings. My guess is that the rivets were harder than the other metal and while showed scoring didn't show too much wear. The stampings, however were way out or round.
They were welded closed and re-drilled. We machined new rivits from stock on hand. The shank of the rivet, through the stamping we figured was about
.532" dia x about .375" long. What we found out later was the length of the shoulder varied based on the placement on the stamping. The other shoulder was only about .187" so that was modified to work. To me, that is amazing that two rivets in one bracket would differ. A waste by today's manufacturing.
Everything was re-assembled and before the springs were re-intalled the hinge showed no wiggle at any of the points. When I dropped the hinges back at the shop tonight they started to re-assemble on the car. I will know for sure tomorrow if this was successful but I'm feeling good about it. More to follow. :)

[Nick DeSpirito]

Very impressive job, Chuck. :) Can't wait to hear the end result. Did you replace the springs too? What condition were the holes in the arms in? Did you have to weld and redrill them too?

[Barry Wolk]

"So I should just order new one?"

http://i244.photobucket.com/albums/gg18/barry2952/Junk%20stuff/143244rofl3.gif

[Mad Scientist]

What we found out later was the length of the shoulder varied based on the placement on the stamping. ........

To me, that is amazing that two rivets in one bracket would differ. A waste by today's manufacturing.


Or even yesterdays manufacturing practice.

But the more you work on the MKII the more you will find that this was their standard practice, or lack there of.:mad: As a result I would not dispute the claim that Ford lost a $1000 on every car they produced.

It's my opinion that the stylist out did themselves, but the mechanical engineers were unfortunately not up to the task. What we have here is a good working prototype but it was not ready to be turned over to the assembly line for production.

[Chuck Lutz]

Did you replace the springs too? What condition were the holes in the arms in? Did you have to weld and redrill them too?

We didn't replace the spings. They seemed strong. The hinges worked OK prior to this repair they just didn't allow the hood to align with the rest of the body.
The holes were pretty oblong especially the upper one. Only one of the two on each bracket required welding (the upper one). The other rivet on each was good to just ream out. Instead of peening the rivet ends we did weld them too. We just had to make sure the hinges weren't binding before welding. The welds can cause shrinkage of the metal so shim stock was used and removed.

[Barry Wolk]

Clever.

Wouldn't a Nylock on a hardened bolt do a better job? Can't adjust welded rivets. Besides, if you didn't weld it you could put a wafer of nylon in the joint for friction and alignment.

[Mad Scientist]

Nothing wrong with welding. But I would just make the appropriate sized shoulder bolts and put nuts on them.

Of course to the purest the nuts would look out of place. However in my case that would probably be one of the last things they noticed.:D