hood latch adjustment

[MYIS300T]

Anybody know if there is an adjustment to raise the height of the hood latch. The CF hood doesnt seem to latch, it is like an 1/8 of an inch to high to cathc. I took of the grill to see if the mounting holes are adjustable but they arent. They are just round holes not oval ones. Is there somthin on the latch itself?

[mikefate]

i dont think you can adjust height of the latch itself. unbolt the 2 screws and take if off. drill or dremel the holes to elongate them. or you could make a thin bracket to get it a little higher.

how hard did yuo try pushing the hood down? i have to put a lot of pressure on my hood to get it to latch correctly

[MYIS300T]

well thats just it.. my hood actually has some cracking in the gell coat from the large chunks of rubber coming off tires from cars at watkins glenn when I had it on my old car. Youd be amazed at the damage a small piece of rubber can do at 130mph.lol crazy...

I guestt ill have to dremll out the mounting hols a bit..

[ISman]

Tom, from my recollection installing my c.f. hood on my '01 car, there are 3 bolts on the latch assembly. One on each side left and right to the latch that gives movement laterally and one main bolt that you loosen to move vertically. It does give you some movement to make adjustment for your c.f. hood. If your hood is good quality, you should be able to fit the hood from these adjustments instead of dremelling it.

[mikefate]

^ there you go. thanks for clarifying charles. i thought there was only 2 bolts holding it on, one on top, one on bottom. i doubt they would change from year to year....and i honestly dont remember, it was a while ago.

[MYIS300T]

well ther are three bolts. There is no adjustment in them at all. The holes are just big enough for the 6mm bolts that secure it. I am reffering to the 10mm head mounting bolts you cae see from the front. Are there others on the back of thisa latch.. I didnt see any. My car is a 2004 same as yours charles there is no adjustment on the three mounting bolts. The latch is dead center on the hood. it is a VIS hood so I can only guess it is decent quality. I had the same prob when I had it on my 2001.

[wenger828]

what about those 2 little rubber hood stops? did you try lowering those?

[BDR]

Dremel the bolt holes in the rad support to elongate them then bolt away again!! Good luck

[Asane Burning]

The two bolts on the side have shoulders. The shoulders align the latch. The problem with elongating any of the holes is over time the latch will settle again. The best way would be to put an extension on the support that we weld on the intercooler. Give me a call and I'll tell you how to do it.

[ISman]

well ther are three bolts. There is no adjustment in them at all. The holes are just big enough for the 6mm bolts that secure it. I am reffering to the 10mm head mounting bolts you cae see from the front. Are there others on the back of thisa latch.. I didnt see any. My car is a 2004 same as yours charles there is no adjustment on the three mounting bolts. The latch is dead center on the hood. it is a VIS hood so I can only guess it is decent quality. I had the same prob when I had it on my 2001.

For my '01 car, the latch assembly did move around and I was able to put my VIS c.f. hood without any dremelling of the latch assembly unit.... Go figure. I need to look at my '04 latch assembly because I will encounter the same issue this winter with my HKS Kansai c.f. hood....

[SophieSleeps]

I was able to adjust mine with the intercooler.
I'm not sure how your intercooler is attached, but if your hood latch uses your IC mounting tab, you can drill another hold on the tab to force the bracke up a bit.

But in a bigger scheme, hood locks are the only safe way to do it.

[TDLI]

try to adjust the 3 bolts to move your latch up and also remove the two rubber stands. if none works, remove your latch and change the spring inside your latch to a softer one. get pins afterwards.

[BDR]

How about you just put washers between the strile latch frame and where it mounts to the physical hood if possible? just a thought if you have a removeable strike latch on the hood side.


if not just elongate the holes and use JB weld to fill under it!!!

JB Weld -- "its just gotta work"

[MYIS300T]

Well i took off the grill again, and took another look at it. It seem as though the latch and hood are fine. Since the hood is that much lighter and you can't just slam it like the stock hood, because of the hood pins (I am using the sparcos already;) ) the decreas in hood mass does not allow enough force on the latch spring to secure it. So I am now looking for a softer mechanism spring as tdli mentioned. Makes sense, good call!!

[mikefate]

use a paper clip. or hot glue it shut.

[TDLI]

back then, i couldnt find a replacement spring that was the exact length as the factory spring. what i did was, i went to the garage door section at home depot and brought a longer spring (but softer than stock one) and went home, heated it up a bit then shortened the spring to the similar length as the factory one. just make sure the new spring hooks well and secure inside the latch. i have had this solution for over 2 years now and together with the hood pins, never had a problem. good luck tom.

[BDR]

spring has little to do with this.

I fixed mine yesterday. I ovalled the two top holes on the hood latch with a Dremel grinder bit to give it about 1/8" higher mount point. Lower 10mm bolt hole is already ovalled so I just tightened that one last.

I did notice that there is ample play on the rad support if you push down on it. (I am using OEM factory rad support - never altered for FMIC)

I still have to give it a quick snap motion to lock it once hood is lowered onto latch.

[MYIS300T]

Well I finallly got around to taking care of this. I went out to home depot and bought a package of these for $4VVVVVV
http://tinypic.com/juvhh5.jpg
I then took the stock hood latch spring measured it up against the new spring. I cut the new sprign and re formed a new hook on the end of it. I then installed it in the latch and presto my hood now latches perfectly!!! I didnt have to cut anything, or elongate the holes or jb weld. I simply replaced the stiff factory spring with a softer spring. Easiest fix I have ever had to do on this car. So for those of you with CF hoods and have a hard time latching them to the stock latch, this is the way to go. YOU can latch it with a one hand push down (10-15lbs of force) even after you have slid the hood down over the hood pin studs.
THIS IS NOT A SUBSTITUE FOR HOOD PINS!! this only secures the middle of the hood.

[TDLI]

congrats tom, doesnt it feel good that you fixed something thats pretty major with something so simple? ;)

[BDR]

Good find but please explain how this help if your hood latch on the hood doesn go down far enough to clear the hook on the rad support hood latch mechanism?

That was my problem.

[TDLI]

rich, if you can see that the hook is not going down far enough then you got to first adjust the latch unit itself and minimize the distance btw the hook and the latch.

however, if the hook goes down far enough and you can at least feel like the hook is "trying" to latch then i would think changing the spring would help because the factory spring is very hard and inelastic. a softer and more elastic spring will simply allow the hook to latch easier because now it requires less push force on the hood.

[MYIS300T]

Rich if you look at post 14, you will see I determined the latch and hood were fine. It really is just because of the difference in the weight of the two hoods. You just couldnt push the carbon fiber hood down hard enough to get it to latch because the latch spring required so much force to get the lock to engage.

[BDR]

^^^ Im gonna try this.... I never really took at look at how the latch engages.... it's interesting none the less.