Hood will not latch

Quote from Bigdog

The hood latches themselves have many adjustments.

The cables have many adjustments....they can be too long or too short.

A few of my cable ends on the latches where in the wrong holes....

The entire latch brackets have adjustments....front to back and side to side..

And they all need to snap open at the exact same time....one click should be heard when all 4 open...

Make sure the 4 catches on the hood itself are tight....they have no other adjustment..

My hood will not latch by simply using a gentle closing method.....it needs a good firm slam....I’m just saying that’s how I have to close mine...it will never latch being gently closed...or stay latched..

Also put lots of grease on the moving parts.....I used white lithium...swimming pool grease ...it’s waterproof..

You might have to put a video camera under the hood to watch what happens when you close the hood...

You might have to adjust the hood hinges too....to slide the hood forward or backwards and or side to side slightly...and up or down.

Or rotate it....left or right...

It’s highly complicated and extremely touchy. A little bit goes a long way...

One more thing....blue thread lock should probably be used on all the bolts....

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That's a lot of info. I have soft closed and pushed latches from day one (almost 4 years)with no problems. I keep the latches and posts lubricated when I change oil it's really not that complicated. If you have the OEM rear brackets slamming the hood will bend them down over time causing issues.

You do know, Bigdog, I posted that mostly in fun, don't ya?

Bill

My rear hood brackets have been upgraded to a heavier one.

My SS is slightly used when I bought it.....don’t know if it was wrecked....the dealer told me they had a hard time aligning the hood......now I really don’t know why......but I spent a great deal of time making it closer to right....

There were cables in the wrong hole issues....and latch alignment issues. I did upgrade the hinges to the one that make the hood open more.

The dealer also cut the rubber bumpers on the dash in half to allow the rear of the hood to sit lower to match the height of dash. Why was it too high?

On any vehicle (car truck) the hood needs to be “dropped” from a certain distance for the hood to fully close and latch. You all know the noise it makes when it’s latched correctly. My SS hood needs to be ”assisted” to close and lock. I push in the middle of my hood with some pressure to get it down and locked. I then push down on the hood over all 4 latches to make sure each has latched....

If you have noticed many SS body panels have alignment/figment isssues involving the uniformity of the gaps between panels. I made many slight adjustments to get the hood where it should be. Some of my hood height adjustments involved the pads and rubber bumpers under the hood.

Missing pads could cause some problems.

I posted the following in December of 2016 and it still holds true today:

"When installing the Madstad windshield on our 2015 we noticed the hood would hit it when closing, a couple of minutes of minor adjusting of the hood it now clears the windshield nicely and it has been opening/closing/latching fine ever since..................."

Bill

An added note to put in a plug for MeanSling, the meansling-hood-lift not only assists in opening the hood, it also forces the hood to close more in a flat position which appears to help in the latches catching.................

bill