MTFCA Forum

My hood doesn't want to line up with firewall. I've taken the radiator off at least twice before and never had this problem, unless I never noticed it. When I go to clamp down the side the curved upper part wants to buckle up. If I don't let it buckle up then there is an inch gap when clamped. We recently took off the wooden dash from the firewall to refinish it, but never touched the metal firewall. The other question, is there any trick to get the hood clamps from being so hard to pull up? I relplaced two in the rear with smaller springs but I didn't know if there is anything e;se i could do? If you click on pics they reappear rightside up for viewing.

Ether the radiator is mounted wrong or you need to add shims under the body to raise the front up. How about photos of the radiator where it mounts to the frame. How does the hood fit at the radiator? Could also be the wood firewall/windshield leans forward from the top down, pushing the metal firewall forward at the top.

Matt, your last photo is revealing. The hood is too far forward and that allows the fabric welting to show. The hood should cover this. The relief in the side panel into which the hood latch hooks is also too far forward in relation to the hood hook. A cannot tell from your photos what is causing this misalignment.

When you mention that the hood does not fit well if you pull the sides down and latch them, it most likely means the curves in the hood need to be played with to get the panels to more closely follow the firewall. This is easier to accomplish if the two side panels are removed . Then the curves can be altered by pulling/pushing the edges on some round stock such as a fence post, until they closely follow the firewall. The front can be reworked in a similar manner. Often overlooked is the bend just a couple of inches either side of the centre hinge.

Once the to panels fit, hopefully the side panels will be taken care of.

Hope this helps.
Allan from down under.

My 21 Touring hood had some hood issues with the hood not going down far enough. I tried carefully recurving the curves of the hood carefully and it did help. I had gotten through restoring the car and had issues with hood alignment. Using shims under the front body to frame mounts helped getting the hood better aligned front and back. It’s not perfect but not really noticeable unless you look really close.
I have 2 black era T’s that I have restored over the years and my 24 T Coupe that I inherited that was still in good shape.
I am no expert but over the years being around T’s I don’t think our T’s were as perfect coming off the assembly line as we think they were.
They were not built with the preciseness like a Rolls Royce or the more expensive cars of that era.
If they were then Henry would not sold anything near the amount of cars that he did and we wouldn’t have as much fun trying to work on and restore them!