Help! Hood won’t align properly with fender

[charlesorosz]

Hi guys,

Getting ready to paint my 75’. As you can see in the pictures, the hood of the car sits too high compared to the passenger side fender. The strange thing is that on the driver side it lines up flush, and the front and rear corners of the hood are pretty flush as well. So it’s really just in this “middle” spot of the passenger side that I have this gap.
I’ve done research online and it seems that others have encountered this issue, but I haven’t found any solutions. People seem to think it is an inner fender panel issue, but I’m not sure where to look for that

Has anyone seen/dealt with this before? Does anyone have suggestions? I don’t want to paint the car without properly aligning it in case it needs bodywork to fix. Help is really appreciated!

 

[Rruuff Day]

Hi guys,

Getting ready to paint my 75’. As you can see in the pictures, the hood of the car sits too high compared to the passenger side fender. The strange thing is that on the driver side it lines up flush, and the front and rear corners of the hood are pretty flush as well. So it’s really just in this “middle” spot of the passenger side that I have this gap.
I’ve done research online and it seems that others have encountered this issue, but I haven’t found any solutions. People seem to think it is an inner fender panel issue, but I’m not sure where to look for that

Has anyone seen/dealt with this before? Does anyone have suggestions? I don’t want to paint the car without properly aligning it in case it needs bodywork to fix. Help is really appreciated!

I have no experience at all with this and my suggestions are likely things you've already looked at but here goes anyway.:
When the hood is open, can you tell if the passenger side of the hood has more of a bow in it than the drivers?
Are the rubber bumpers aligned properly?
Is there something in the latch alignments on that side that are causing the hood to stress and buckle up slightly?
Barring all the above, does the fender edge have a slight dip along that side?
Lastly, could the frame have a bit of a bow in it along that side.
That's all I got. Hopefully some C3 guys will chime in here with something useful. Good luck.

 

[RockyPM]

I saw this problem on the show Guild Garage, If all other items check out as @Rruuff Day has asked above then this may be the way.

The hood was to flat in that case. They traced the form of the fender and then cut a plywood template for the curve. The underside of the hood has a box channel to hold the curve. This was cut in several places then then formed against the template. Once correct curve achieved, the cuts were fiberglassed in and refinished and painted. Look up the program as I think this may be the way unless you can find another hood to try the fitment.

 

[Lawrence]

sorry to hear about your issue, I have run into this on a 74 that we did a restoration on, I am unsure of the cause but we tried to work the fiberglass as suggested, got it close, however I did source another hood that fit much better before I spent the cash on paint.
welcome to the world of poor fitting C3 body panels.
I love them though.

 

[canadianvette]

Hi guys,

Getting ready to paint my 75’. As you can see in the pictures, the hood of the car sits too high compared to the passenger side fender. The strange thing is that on the driver side it lines up flush, and the front and rear corners of the hood are pretty flush as well. So it’s really just in this “middle” spot of the passenger side that I have this gap.
I’ve done research online and it seems that others have encountered this issue, but I haven’t found any solutions. People seem to think it is an inner fender panel issue, but I’m not sure where to look for that

Has anyone seen/dealt with this before? Does anyone have suggestions? I don’t want to paint the car without properly aligning it in case it needs bodywork to fix. Help is really appreciated!

Not sure if you have had the hood off or not.
if so check the gap at the front to see how close it is. if it’s to close move the hood towards the back and then check to see how high it is to the fenders.
moving it back towards the windshield will lower it a bit but not as much as you need..

 

[gdh]

I had this issue as well. Turned out that the quarter was not aligned and glued on properly. My vette mechanic brought out a mallet and wacked the bonding strip inside the engine bay. Bond broke and quarter popped into alignmen. Took him a minutes to fix, not an issue since.

 

[charlesorosz]

I had this issue as well. Turned out that the quarter was not aligned and glued on properly. My vette mechanic brought out a mallet and wacked the bonding strip inside the engine bay. Bond broke and quarter popped into alignmen. Took him a minutes to fix, not an issue since.

That’s incredible, I feel like that would solve my issue as well. I’m not entirely sure where to check for the bonding strip but next time I get a chance to look at her I’ll do some investigating. Thank you very much!

 

[gdh]

The previous owner had tried a few things including slotting the hinge plates to move the hood more toward the windshield. I swapped on an original L88 hood few yrs after the repair and it sat properly.