[ZeeOhSix]

I've had my new EB for 24 hrs now, and have noticed that the hood is slightly mis-aligned from the factory. If you stand in front of the car and look at it, the air gaps show that the whole hood is shifted to the passenger side.

I opened the hood and see that it's hinged brackets bolt down to the frame rails. If I loosen these brackets is there enough slop in the system to make it align like it should?

Also, if anyone has any tips on doing this (so I don't screw something up or damage anything, please feel free to let me know .

Thanks,
:cheers:

 

[N4C5S]

Just curious, does it close ok?

JC

 

[ZeeOhSix]

JC -- yes, it closes fine, but if I look at the gap between the front nose facia and the front of the hood, the gap is notacably smaller on the passenger side, plus the gap at the rear of the hood near the driver's side has a larger gap than on the passenger side. So, I need to kind of rotate the whole hood just a hair CW if viewed looking back at the car while standing at the nose. It's noticable to me, so I want to tweak it.

If its as simple as just loosening the hinge brackets and tweaking, I'll do it myself before I let the dealer touch it .

Someone certainly has had their hood off on one of these -- I'm just looking for any hints if someone has experience with this.

 

[ZeeOhSix]

Update on the Hood Alignment

Well, last night was the first time I drove my Z at night. The headlights where popped up and I opened the hood to look at something. Upon lowering the hood, I noticed the hood was kind of hanging up on the RH headlight pod ... WTF .

Apparently, the sight misalignment from the factory was such that the headlight pod scraped on the hood edge! When the headlights are up, even with the hood aligned perfectly, I can see that the clearances while operating the hood are close.

Since I would be driving at night for the next few days, I attempted to adjust the hood. Let me begin by saying -- ITS A FRUSTRATING JOB! I'm a very competant mechanic, and I must say the hood adjustment is tricky to do. I was doing it alone, which didn't help matters -- a helper would be a bonus. The gas struts don't help matters, since when the hinge braket nuts are loosened, the gas struts want to push the brackets towards the nose of the car. At this point I didn't want to disconnect the gas struts and have to worry about propping the hood. This is where a helper would come in handy too.

Not only do you have adjustments for left and right, and front and back but also for hood hieght on the front edge (those rubber standoffs with threaded adjusters). There are also adjustments for hood angle. As you can see, too many degrees of freedom to mess with. I must have messed with it for 1.5 hrs, and its still not perfect , plus it closes hard now, so the latches at the rear need adjustments too. I had to go somewhere, so I left it alone since the frustration level was high anyway. I'll tweak on it some more when I have more time. At least the headlight pod is not rubbing anymore when popped up.

You guys might want to check for rub marks between the headlight pod and the edge of the hood on the rear/inner corners of the headlight covers. I'm sure there must be a few other misaligned hoods out there somewhere.