So I got the hinges replaced at the dealer today. I'll post pics when I get a second. Man you should see the passenger side - it is bent a good 30 degrees. The body shop manager says they do 1 or 2 G's a day for hood hinges. The problem is that you can't lubricate the hinge where it is located and the passenger side always goes first. He gave me the hinge that was bent and man let me tell you, this thing was seized in place. I couldn't operate the hinge for the life of me and I'm a pretty big guy. He also said I was really lucky I was careful when I opened the hood and noticed that it was hitting the fender. He has seen all sorts of fenders come in that are knarled on the top from the owner just opening and closing the hood without checking.

So lesson learned - watch your hood when you open it and it if it is binding on the fender, make sure you have a buddy lift the hood up a bit on the corner when you open it so as not to damage the crap out of the car.

 

What a joke ,my pass. side just started doing this, there sure seems to be a lot of stupid things that go wrong with these cars.

 

For those of you with '03 and '04 coupes, did you have to pay for the parts and repair yourself?

I did an oil change today and my hood is slightly binding on the fenders on both sides. I'm pretty pissed about this.

I love my car, but Infiniti needs to step up their game in terms of quality(ie paint, interior, etc).

 

I just did my oil change yesterday when I noticed my car had the same problem. I couldn't get the hood open without scraping off a small mount of paint on the edges of both sides of my cars side panels.

I went out and bought a new can of White Lithium grease today as well as some very small rubber tubing to use as a flexible bridge between 2 of those spray can plastic hoses(so that I could angle the can and get into the cubby where the hinge latch is). In fact, when I opened the hood today... the hood wouldn't even open at all... it was stuck down and wouldn't even unlatch. After screwing with it for about 20 minutes, I got it to open, and then I sprayed each of the hinges(using my flexible double-hose contraption) first with PB-Blaster to free the semi-frozen hinges, let it sit for about 10 minutes, and then moved the hood up and down about half of it's total throw about 20 times to work the stuff into the hinges. I then let it sit for about an hour and a half, and opened/closed it a few more times.

Then I took an air compressor and blew out the excess PB-Blaster from the hinges and dried the area off with some towels. Once it was all clean and mostly free of PB-Blaster, I hit it liberally(again, using my double-straw and tube-bridge contraption) to spray the hinges as well as the hood latch mechanismi with White Lithium grease, and moved the hood up and down a few more times to work that in.

After doing all this, the hood now appears to open and close just fine.

I'm going to have to keep my eyes on this and make sure to open the hood every week or other week at the least, to make sure it doesn't get stuck again.

It's pretty pathetic that this happens on our cars... considering that they're not that old, and hood latch technology is far from in it's infancy.

Hell.. My Tacoma is an '01 and has been through much much more than it's fair share of streams, deep water, and 8 seasons worth of New England's Snowy/Salty roads and I've never even heard a single creak from any hinge... nevermind a hinge that sticks or freezes. I open the hood on my truck about half as much as on my car too.

Infiniti's hood latch design = FAIL.

 

Yep - the design sucks. Trying to lubricate the hinge is most likely the best approach unless you are like me and the hinge arm is already bent in which case you are SOL. Before I installed it, I hit both hinges with some high end graphite lubricant which should help but I'm going to start adding this to the maintenance rotation.

 

Had same problem with the hinges, I used WD-40 and it seem to have done the job. Lubricating the hinges has become a regular part of maintenance of our G35's.

 

does infiniti warrenty cover the hinges?

 

Happened to me, fenders have to come off, no way around it. You can do the whole job in about 2 hours.

 

Yes warranty will cover the hinges, if your car is still under warranty.

 

Arg.. WTF, I noticed this started to happen to my car as well. I noticed a few months ago that there was some chipped paint at the tip of the fender and the rear of the hood on the passenger side. I thought the dealer had chipped it when doing an oil change or doing maintenace. I recently had coilovers installed they were a bit stiff so I opened the hood to adjust the damping and I hear this scraping and I noticed that the hood was pushing the fender up and out. I was shocked and pissed, I had to lift and pull to get the hood up. I am going to go home and spray the crap out of the hinge tonight and see if it helps.

 

Crap! Just happened to me today. Heard that awful creaking and when i looked up the whole fender was all bent and chipped. Damn!

 

I have had the similar problem as well. I have an 06 coupe. I'm lowered with coilovers and have a fairly stiff suspension.

A rep at the dealership said that most people who lower their cars will run into this problem. Something to do with the frame tweaking slightly enough to bend the hood hinges.

Replaced both hinges about a month ago. Just noticed recently that the hood is dipping about 1/8" on the driver's side again. Even with a strut tower bar the hinges are still becoming bent.

Anyone find solutions to this problem yet?

 

I took mine in to Infiniti of Mobile for hood hinge/ rubbing and was told it was my fault and the car had been in a wreck(which it hasn't). So I take it home, get out the wd and white lithium grease and go to town. Let it sit for 10 minutes and lube it again while raising and lowering the hood. Anyone know what happened? The metal overstressed and broke in 2. Good new is at least my hood is straight again.

 

It has nothing to do with lowering. My totally stock suspensioned one had it happen.
The problem is that the hinge itself has an unreinforced bend right near the axis of rotation. Combined with the really tight tolerances in the pivot of the hinge, once the small amount of grease that can get in the pivot area is gone, there's a huge mechanical advantage from the hood you lift to cause the bend to get twisted.

You may want to check the pads that the hood rests on, there's a bolt with a rubber pad on it that will let you raise and lower where the hood rests. That may take care of the 1/8" gap.

The solution? Keep a can of white lithium grease and spray it every oil change.

I caught mine early and was able to bring it from creaky, groaning, but still moving to good as fixed. I do have hinges purchased, just in case though.

If you're tempted to use WD-40 or PBlaster, remember that the cabin air intake is right there by the passenger hinge, so you'll smell whatever you spray there for at least a couple days. White lithium grease is virtually odor-free.

 

Wrathernaut

Thanks for the info. I was skeptical at first about it being lubrication since the hinges are only a month old.