Hello -

Totally frustrated - I have the passenger side sticky hood hinge - causing all sorts of issues. The latest: My hood won't latch - the safety catch catches - the primary will not - it lines up -seems like the U shaped latch on the hood is not going deep enough into the mechanism? I adjusted the mechanism up as far as I could - it only came up a tiny bit -

Is there any other way to adjust?

Hood was open all day - I changed the plugs and with the kids around it took all day as I could not work continuously - I did have the engine cover etc. off - could the engine be hitting the bottom of the hood?

I just can't seem to push it down deep enough to latch it -

Thanks from a new guy here -

BTW she purrs like a kitten after changing the plugs and cleaning the intake - only 70K miles, but the plugs were considerably out of gap and looking pretty burned up.



Jeff

 

Look for lost tools.

 

I put a little grease on the hasp to show me where it is rubbing - oddly the latching mechanism was too far back? Don't know how that would change in the course of an afternoon unless the hinge on the passenger side bent - and the vertical part of the U shaped hasp was interfering with the mechanism. I took a giant channel locks and bent it forward some - it works now.

I am I noticed though bending the S%#@ out of the lip on the top of the fender. I need to get that hinge on the right side resolved. I think a big part of the problem and reason for the right hinge going bad is the bloody prop rod - it seems to put a lot of odd moment on the hinge on that side.

Its always something.

 

I would guess all of your problems are being caused by that hinge. I'm having mine replaced tomorrow because it got to the point that I couldn't even open my hood without scraping paint off of the fender. It just gets worse everytime you open and close it too. The dealership wanted to try and adjust it without replacing the hinges, but they ended up shifting the entire hood so the gaps on the passenger side are larger than those on the driver's side. I think the only real solution is to replace both sides and spray lubricant on them once a month.

You may be right that the prop rod is part of the cause for the hinge going bad so quickly. It seems like everybody's passenger side goes first.

 

I had the problem in the summer. I sprayed the crap out of the passenger hinge with everything and anyway that PB made, liquid wrench etc and worked it slowly up and down and finally got it working properly again.