Started assembling my hood and trunk hinges today. The Roadster has an unusual hood hinge in that it’s a 4 link arrangement, allowing the hood to lift and then tuck in, to prevent the front edge from digging into the body.
Once I started putting all the pieces together (I had all the steel powdercoated last year), something struck me as not so cool. There’s lots of side-to-side and front-to-rear alignment adjustment, but then there’s these wavy washers designed to go in between the bolted hinge points. When everything is bolted down tight on the shouldered bolts, it has a lot of flex and slop in the hinge assembly.
I may be proven wrong when everything gets assembled, but I didn’t like this. I also didn’t like that the wave washer is right up against my powdercoat, which could wear over time and then the steel starts rusting.
The copper-looking thing in the middle is an oilite bushing installed in the hinge arm.
If I removed the wave washers, with the nut tightened down to the shoulder bolt, that left a ton of room and made things even worse. Off to ACE Hardware for some washers. The idea is to use washers to take up the space so that the nut is tightening on the last washer and clamping everything together.
Here’s a comparison of what I did. The bottom assembly is with the wave washer and the top is without, but with a washer added to eat up the space. This worked wonderfully. I am able to use the nylock nut to fully tighten the hinge (tightening on the bolt threads and not on the shoulder), then back it off about 1/16 turn so that the assembly moves smoothly but with little to no slop.
Here’s the hinge installed and ready for the hood. The top bracket gets riveted to the hood. The 2 carriage bolts at the bottom are adjustable for side-side and fore-aft. There’s another pair of carriage bolts underneath to adjust height. In the background you can see the drivers side hinge laying flat.
Another update this evening as I’m on vacation and getting some work done… as well as a big update coming soon.