Here is the problem. The 1949 engineers should have been fired. THIS is AWFUL ! The perimeter reinforcement of the edges of the hood STOP about 2" from the hinge mount. And WHEN, not IF, the hinges get rusty/old/start to bind then the maximum bending force on the hood occurs right HERE. There are many many many 1949 hoods that crack right here.
The '50/'51 hinges, springs and bracket from the junkyard in MN got for 125 bucks plus shipping. All looks pretty good except that one of the hinges was a bit bent AND three of the bolts were twisted off (you can see two of them on the end of the bracket)...GRRRRR.. had to drill them out and retap.
Driver's side hinge in place. You use one of the "old" 5/16" holes to mount it to the firewall, while the three other holes have to be drilled and use 1/4" bolts to secure it. The good thing is that these three bolts/nuts are NOT where you have to put a nut on from the other side of the firewall. Cruise control box with yellow connector on the lower left, tubing for windshield washers and tach heat tube on the left.
You can see that there is the one 5/16" bolt that goes through the firewall using one of the holes that the original hinge bolted up to. The reason they used that hole is because the bolt also goes through a bracket on the inside of the firewall to stiffen the dash, so that bolt is need. When all is installed/adjusted/aligned it will all come out again for paint.
Since there is no "stiffining" along the rear side edges of the hood, it will bend/warp with very little forces. So you have to fabricate two 18 Gauge supplemental hood stiffeners which raises the hinge bolts a little bit so that you duplicate the profile of a '50/'51 hood mounting surface. Since there was no reinforcement on my hood, it was bent, and once you weld in the new reinforcements it isn't going to bend, so you have to get the outside edge contour correct to match the shape of the fenders. First is to mark off a 1x6 board (this is redwood) on one of the fender edges, then shape the board to transfer the shape to the hood before you weld it. Belt sander to shape the template that fits the fender curvature.
To get the hood curvature correct, a template must be fabricated from the curvature of the fender, then clamped to the hood and weld in the new supports and stiffener. You can see the stiffener on the opposite side of the hood and the cutout on the near side. Blocks screwed to the template can be removed and "rescrewed" to the other side of the template to adjust the opposite side of the hood.
Now to repair the "welding burns" on the top of the hood. DAMN look at all that body putty that somebody threw on there to try to make things fit. I made a huge mistake here, in not grinding off ALL the body putty and starting over, as , after I painted the car, this area has started to crack and come apart. Oh, well, gives it character, I suppose...
To get the correct shape on the back of the hood, it's VERY IMPORTANT to have your gasket in place, that holds the curvature correct when the hood closes. You may notice that the entire rear edge is a bit flimsy, and they did that on purpose, relying on resting on the gasket strip to correct the shape. Thought that a stainless steel strip would be in order to hold that hood/firewall gasket in place. The stock gasket is slightly curved, but installing it straight still works fine. Kinda purdy.......My old buddy Criag at C&C Sheetmetal cut these stainless strips for me. Very carefully fitting and drilling new holes for mounting. Then some body work to mud the old holes that are exposed when the "straight" strip is installed rather than slightly curved.
I had already masked off the joint between where the color and black paint would intersect to be right under the rear hood gasket on the top of the firewall, but after refitting with the straight SS strip, some of the existing holes could be seen on the back side of the gasket and that "joint line" was not under the gasket. Sooooo.. start over with the firewall paint again...ahahah
