Thread: model A hood prop

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As I go through the design and build exercise on my roadster pickup hood, I thought that this sliding hood prop should be shared with other rodders. The 1" square tubes that run from the grillshell to the cowl replace the round rod supports that were stock on early Fords. They support the grillshell, and the one square tube has a piano hinge full length to hinge one side of the hood. ($8 at hardware store). I ran a peice of 3/8" diameter cold rolled steel roundbar between these square tubes about 2" out from the cowl, and anchored it to a small plate tab which is welded to the square tubes. I then drilled out a 3/8" coupling nut ($2 at hardware store) so that it would slide freely over the 3/8" rod. I welded a small plate tab to the coupling nut, and to the reinforcing rod that runs from side to side of the hood. I used 2 spherical rod ends (1/4" diameter, some people call them Heim joints) with a peice of 1/4" dia cold rolled round bar between them, to make the link. The round black thing just behind the slider (coupling nut) is a split 3/8" shaft collar. This thing works really good----as you close the hood, the slider moves along the 3/8" roundbar, untill the hood is shut. When you open the hood, the link pulls the slider in the other direction untill it stops against the shaft collar. You can set how far your hood opens before the coupling nut stops against the shaft collar by moving the collar into whatever position you want, then locking it there with the set screws which are part of it. I have not built a mechanism to latch the hood closed yet, but will make something later this week.

Pretty slick engineering there, Brian. It just keeps looking better and better.

Very nice Brian.

Seeing well thought out and well built stuff done at home is something I really like.
Somewhat novel and well working solutions to small problems is impressive as well.
As is your thinking about going transversely with the hood prop.

Having the prop always in place and ready to go without dinking around is nice as well.
The comercial hood props work ok, but it seems like a little more effort is required to use them.

That said - and not trying to highjack the post here - is my take on a longitudinally running hood prop.

Pretty self-explanatory, but there's one small trick to making these work.
I've seen others try, but most times the support rod binds up because the builder used locknuts on the angled connectors.
Angled connectors being a poor word to describe the carburetor arm-like pieces I made for the ends of the prop rod.
Leave the locknuts off and let the threaded rod roll inside the angled connectors.
You need a little more room to turn the rod due to it rolls more than Heims will allow.

When the hood is fully open - about 90 degrees from closed - the prop rod slider ends up against the hood's firewall brace rod connector/support.

The pic below shows how it works for the most part.
I do have a pic taken inside the hood that shows how the slider ends up when the hood is closed if you'd like to see it.

Originally posted by Streets
I still like muh Quick 'n Ez way with the Broom handle.. and it comes in a rainbow of colours too..

I jus' wish i had a hood to close.