use cleco pins to register hood and deck-lid before removing

[dhanna]

Anyone ever try to do this before going to paint and body?

before loosening the bolts that hold the hinges to the hood or deck lid you drill appropriate sized holes through the body of the hinge carefully through taking extra care not to hit the hood skin then registering the position with cleco pins

you do the same thing on the body side of the hinge and then when everything comes back from paint you just re-register with the cleco pin and bolt it all up.

any thoughts?

 

[eriknetherlands]

Interesting thought; it's quick.

I have mindlessly unbolted my decklid (trunk) and thus have to fiddle with fit somewhere in the future. I guessed however that if i leave the gastank out & while using a lift that I can access from the underside to tighten the bolts of the lid from the inside. But for the hood I didn't know any better then to just fiddle, measure, correct, and do that *10.

I think using Cleco's will work to keep the alignment you had before the tear down.
But wouldn't you have 2 holes per hinge in plain sight then when all is bolted up?

Mind you that after paint the holes are smaller due to paint thickness. You will push the paint out of the hole to make way for the cleco, so you'll need to touch it up anyway.

Erik.

 

[dhanna]

the way I've thought this out is as follows

each hinge has two sides
-Side 1 bolts to the hood or deck lid
-Side 2 bolts to the chassis / body

from a Geometric Dimensioning and Tolerance school of though a pin and a slot are all thats needed to register two face mated parts in 2 dimensions
assuming that the slotted holes of the hinges on either the deck lid or the hood are a tight fit in one transverse direction all that would be needed is one cleco per hinge side
BUUUUUUT
the slots are probably not a tight fit in the transverse direction so that will mandate two small clecos per hinge side

For the HOOD
so by my count just for the hood it's 8 clecos not counting the four for the hood latches (two per hood latch) total of 12 clecos on the front

For the Deck lid
8 clecos same reasoning as for the hood but only two for the deck lid latch maybe less if it is already registered by it's hardware.

I'm gonna drill the holes this week and try this out

worst case scenario I have to re-aline everything during assembly way down the line
in any case it's a problem for 'Future Dan' and he doesn't even exist yet! so who cares what he wants! mwahahahaha!

 

[Bmachine]

Any update on this interesting idea?

But, as another member pointed out, wouldn't be enough to simply drill two pilot holes top and bottom in each hinge, just enough to either stick a nail or drill bit in it for alignment? Or to make it even fancier, hole in the hing and then corresponding tap in the hood for an M8 or M10?

 

[OCCoupe]

We drilled 3 small allignement holes in each hinge prior to disassembly. This helped imendley on reassembly and were easy to conceal.

 

[Bmachine]

Yep. Ended up doing the same thing. Fortunately my hood had not been repainted yet so I was able to replace the hinges in the exact same original position based on the imprint left in the paint.
Note the bent Home Depot hinge inserted under the hole to keep drill from denting the outer skin.

 

[Layne]

I just installed the hood loosely, and was barely able to reach in through the grille openings and tighten one bolt on each side with it closed and aligned properly. Open it up and tighten the rest of the bolts. Perfect alignment done in 5 minutes with no extra holes.

 

[eriknetherlands]

The no-hole solution found by Wayne seems the way to go for me.

How about the door hinge alignment; acces to the 4 body side screws while closed is zero is it?