Re-aligning hood after accident
 

I hit a deer on thanksgiving morning, (tapped a buck at 10mph slamming on the brakes, he was fine, dammit) and have been trying to DIY fix it all back into place.

My hood was undamaged, but it seems like its alignment was thrown off by a centimeter.. and given the huge panel gaps already it is really noticeable. Does anybody know what goes into aligning a hood correctly?

Pics.


Some thing must have gotten bent.

You might be able to loosen and re-position the mounting bolts a bit.

But, I don't know if they have any play ... :iono:

The redneck way would be to grab hold of the hood hinges with a pipe wrench and twist them till the hood was straight ...... :D


humfrz

Is it a little higher than the fenders about halfway back?

@Ultramaroon

Yep the hood is popped up:

http://i.imgur.com/UOg5aeg.jpg

the front support is bent up, or the hood has a slight buckle (made to do that in an accident, looks very slight so you might not have noticed). you can try to cheat it by spinning the hood stops down on the front support. if they do nothing, the latch is too high and holding it up. you can also try to loosen those bolts and lower the latch down.

Ooo, yeah, the hood has buckled at the crumple zone. If you lift it, you'll see an engineered divot in the frame. A friend's was slightly deformed there, maybe popped up a quarter inch. With the hood open, I just supported the front and pushed down against the seam at the edge. Kinda like what @humfrz was saying.

Unfortunately, yours looks a bit more serious. Do you see paint cracked around there?


Advice for anyone trying this, push down at the very edge. If you apply force inboard of the seam the hood will buckle like the lid of a pickle jar. :(

Boink ...... :)

@radroach in your picture, what should I be looking at .. ?? ... the middle of the picture or the lower part of the picture ..... ??


humfrz

@humfrz the pic is meant to show the hood popped up, but I guess you noticed that someone doored a ding into my fender.

@Ultramaroon no paint damage there. My bumper has a spot that is crazed though where the impact was. It pushed against the rubber strip that runs along the crash beam and the thin metal part supporting it got bent, I hammered that back into place no problem.

I will check out under the hood and try to get a better understanding before pushing it down.

PS: I love you guys.

Oh, duh! that's your wheel well! Haha... Yeah. Just push that back into place.

OK, after further examination on my car ...... this is what I would suggest.

DIY method (do at your own risk)

Open hood, place a bent, wide blade screwdriver (or tiny crow bar) through the hole near that crumple indent ...... pry gently as another person holds the hood near the back and front and tries to stretch it up. What you are doing is trying to un-crumple the crumple dent.

PDR method. I'll betcha a good PDR person could get that hood laying right in short order .....:)


humfrz

@humfrz

Thanks, I do have some other dings I need to get done by a PDR specialist, I'll see what they say and I'll pass on some of the information that you guys gave about the using the supports.