Thread: Cowl and hood lacing/oversize hinge pins

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I have a few questions I hope someone can answer. What is the correct lacing I should use on the aftermarket Brookville firewall and grille shell? I ordered the original style lacing and it just doesn't look like it will work. Also, I have not been able to find oversize door hinge pins. Does anyone make these? One last question. I am having to pull the very front cowl bolt down very tight to get my door to align with the body lines on the quarter panels. This is the bolt that originally used a spring. I don't have the spring installed. Man these bolts have a bind on them! Is this the correct way to do this? The door fit is good with these tightened way down. Very good! I just don't know if these bolts will live like this. Any help will be appreciated. Thanks

Not sure on the hinge pins, but on my car, the way the hood fits, i need a different thickness of cowl lacing at some points than others to make the hood fit nicely along the cowl... i just have a dense foam rubber strip on mine, with a second piece underneath the other one in some spots to act as "shims" to make the hood line look better... its still not perfect, but you'd be amazed at how much height adjustment you can get out of your hood to cowl by playing with the seals...you can get the foam stuff from a body shop supplier, they have a catalog of 100s of different widths and thicknesses, with or without adhesive back.

I used a piece of vacuum hose in the original hood install in my 32.

Later on, I went to the stock stuff.
It's working well and any not quite perfect areas are more a fault of hood/cowl and hood/grille shell fit rather than the lacing style.

Sometimes the paint thickness bit gets you.
Happened to me.
I had a pretty good fit and after paint had to raise the hood up on the right side - where it's hinged - for clearance.
That threw things off a bit, but not so bad I couldn't run it as it was.

What would cure the problem is to make a new pair of 1/2" x 1" rectangular tubing cowl to grille shell braces that sit a bit lower.
Live and learn.

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As for the oversized hinge pins -

The new re-pro cast stock style hinges that came on my Wescott body rattled around a bit.
I think the two parts are probably drilled separately during manufacture and that's why the poor fit there.

I jigged the hinges together and drilled them to 5/16"
A couple of stainless 5/16" bolts with the hex machined a little thinner and top center machined down a bit for looks along with a pal style nylock stainless lock nut took all the play out.

The bolts as hinge pins are right there in plain sight and in 14 years of running the car no one has ever commented on them.

Pal nuts are the thin nuts, about half the thickness of a regular nut.
You can find stainless pal nylocks at Orchard Supply and other places that carry a good supply of stainless bolts & nuts.
I'm finding most of what I need in stainless - as well as regular steel - at my local True Value and Ace hardware stores.

I've given up trying to find bolts & nuts at Home Despair.

Hood lacing and trim on Brookville bodies and grille shells does not look nice - Vintique, Bob Drake and others have two different size molded foam lacing that is quite nice. If you do want to use the original style, you have to 'season' it by beating with a hammer to flatten out somewhat.

Brookville hinges are, for no better word, CRAP. Though mine is a '31A, the hinges were so bound up that they actually kinked the right door, the left just squealed. I ordered some 5/16" oil lite bushings from McMaster-Carr along with some hardened round stock and 6-32 set screws and went to work. The '31 hinges are only flat stock, rolled to fit the pin. I welded up the open ends, drilled for the bushings and reamed as an assembly for the pins, then set screwed it all in place. The only discrepancy is that there is no rounded head on the pins(yet).

Home Depot fasteners around here are distributed by Crown Bolt, and are poor quality Chinese made. Lowe's stuff is a bit better. Tractor Supply fasteners seem to be somewhere between the other two.

Thanks for the replies. I have temporarily layed several layers of 1/2" weatherstrip tape at the cowl and shell to check the hood gap. I have the four piece hood. This gave me a decent fit until the stuff started crushing down. I am still concerned with how much I have had to pull the cowl down on the passenger side to get the door alighnment correct. This also effects the hood gap. Does anyone have any suggestions here?
I have considered drilling the original hinges for bushings, but am concerned with getting the metal too thin (1/16" is all the material that would be left). I may have to use the 5/16" bolts for hinge pins.
I just bolted in my front fender support brackets and tried to fit the headlight bar only to find that nothing fit. The support brackets are so far off I don't know if I can even use them. The fender holes are almost a full hole off! I hate to think that I am going to have to relocate these holes and try to shape them for the headlight bar to fit correctly. This is driving me nuts! I will look at it again today. Thanks again for the replies.

Originally Posted by deuce4papa

Thanks for the replies.
I just bolted in my front fender support brackets and tried to fit the headlight bar only to find that nothing fit. The support brackets are so far off I don't know if I can even use them. The fender holes are almost a full hole off! I hate to think that I am going to have to relocate these holes and try to shape them for the headlight bar to fit correctly. This is driving me nuts! I will look at it again today. Thanks again for the replies.

Ain't it fun trying to line everything up - I've talked to several rod shops about building and aligning parts and 40 hours seems to be the norm for making things right as far as gaps, detail lines and hoods - and I'm building a '31 with a '32 grille shell which is about the same, gap and alignment wise as a '32.

I found that with using fiberglass fenders that I had to take as much as 1/4" to 3/8" out of the top arch outside of the headlight bar holes to make the brackets fit - the 'glass fenders are much thicker and the brackets are made as direct replacements for original steel fenders. The brackets don't fit solidly against the fenders either - you may have to put a shim between the fender and the holes for the headlight bar - normal for a '32. Also, if you have IFS, you will have to notch the fender brackets as well to clear the top 'A' frame bracket.

Shimming a body for alignment can be time consuming and tedious (do, undo, again, again.......). I'm not clear on what your problem is, but some times you have to shim up further back so you don't have to go so much down in front. Or another way to think of it is if you've got it aligned with an overtighten, the whole body needs to go up all around enough to ease the bind.

Shimming the steel '32 body, and getting the beltlines aligned is pretty difficult. Like mentioned above, try adding a 1/16" shim under the rear of the cowl, just ahead of the door opening - in effect tipping the passenger side of the cowl forward. The pinch bolts for the cowl should get pretty tight, but not super tight...if you had th springs, you should just get past the point of compressing them fully.

That pinch bolt is mainly for sealing up the body to firewall, shimming under the firewall feet and subrails of the body is where you get your overall body alignment.

On your fender deal, do tighten anything - just try to get as many bolts started as possible. Front fender braces are going to be the last thing to line up, and yes, you may have to make modifications. to the bracket and/or teh fender. The steel repro '32 front fenders arent perfect..they are slightly different from side to side, especially in the lip area around the front. Take you time and think through every move....you've heaed the measure twice, cut once rule - with this stuff is is more like measure 7 times, THINK about cutting it, and then go back and measure 7 more times....haha

As Bob and others have said, getting a 32 to fit correctly is a real chore!

If you have to put a lot of pressure on one side of the cowl then something is wrong somewhere else.

I went through this trying to keep the doors closed when going through gutters etc. on my rpu.

I would loosen all the body mounts and go get a handful of different thickness front end alignment shims and start shimming under body mounts until everything lines up and doors shut properly. So-Cal speed shop says they start at the rear of the body and work to the front, but I was all over the place adding and subtracting shims til everything worked.
Remember adding shimms to right rear will bring down the left front etc.

Have fun! Its a real pain, but worth it when everything lines up.

I even had to drill and make new rear body mounts as the stock mounts didn't line up with the roadster pickup body.

Hope you made some sense of all this!!

Mick

I did shim at the back of the cowl and it did help with the door alignment. I can't install the spring on the front bolt because I didn't weld the threaded sleeve in at an angle to match the original frame indent. I think I can correct this when I remove the body. I found that the headlight bar would not bolt through the existing fender holes. I have welded these up and have redrilled new ones. I will have to make something that will put the indent back in the fender. I can then modify the fender braces. Everyone was right. This has become such a time consuming project. Without your help, I would have thrown up my hands and given up on this thing. Thanks to all for the help and encouragement!