Hood pin location vote

i live in the High Desert area of SoCal. The wind is stupid and I'd like my hood to stay where it is when I'm driving. I just bought a set of AutoFab hood pins and I'm not sure where to locate them.

Location 1


Location 2


Or Location 3


I'm thinking 3 is my favorite, but let's see.

 

I like #1

 

Your hood is moving because of wind?

 

x2

 

#1 will give you the best functional results. The hood latch is holding the center of the hood. If you're having vibrations, then it is most likely coming from the sides of the hood where there is nothing to support it but the rubber spacers. I've done 2 hood repairs in the past week resulting from hood flutter. Go for what works, not what "looks better". Even though IMO, the pins look better off to the sides.

 

I would say that it's moving, but it does vibrate quite a bit, and I've seen things fly trucks and cars while. I just don't like surprises. And besides they are gonna look sweet!!

 

As a second piece of advice, get the largest fender washers you can fit and place them under the core support (where I'm assuming you'll be adding the pins themselves). The sheet metal there is extremely thin and I've seen hood pins tear out completely when only mounted with the supplied nut on the threads.

 

I have some thin plare steel in the garage. I can make washers outta that. Thanks for the idea

 

Make sure it's good and strong. You say "thin metal", I might be concerned. On one of the repairs, I welded a 4" section of 1/8" plate to the core support in those areas to strengthen the sheet metal then welded the pin mounting nut to the top of that. I wouldn't go thinner than that.

 

that's pretty serious ‍

 

It was a small section really, about 1"x4". But after seeing how easily the core support gave up and spit out the pins, we wanted to be sure it didn't happen again.

 

You have any pics?

 

I didn't take any but I'll see if I can get some from the owner of the truck. Pretty easy to imagine though. He installed the hood pins where the rubber spacers were on either end of the hood (removing the rubber spacers). The hood latch broke and while off road, the wind caught the hood and tore the pins out of the core support. To fix it we had to patch the sheet metal but for a stronger repair we decided to weld that small plate over the torn out hole and 4" was about enough to span the hole and give us enough room to be confident in the repair. This is all out of necessity mind you, since you're doing the install on an undamaged core support, I'd think some large washers underneath or at least a strip of backing steel should be good enough. I may have overcautioned you.

 

I do really appreciate the heads and info. It's cool Bro. No worries. I have insurance anyways so...

 

my hood latch thingy broke a few weeks ago

 

Location 1

 

That's exactly how the hood I repaired was before I got in there.
What we figured out through some fancy truck CSI was that a combination of things led up to this failure, but ultimately it all led back to the same weak spot. First, the owner had a dual battery setup in the stock location. Not entirely uncommon. This caused the core support bushings to take a shit. No biggie, replaced with ES poly bushings. Then while in Mojave, we noticed the inner and outer fender well sheet metal had separated at the spot welds as was evident by a 1/2" gap between the hood and driver's side fender. Again, no biggie, a little sheet metal work and welded it back together using stitch welds instead of spot welds. By this time he had moved the second battery to inside the cab to help relieve some of the weight on that corner. Hood pins were added as a precaution since enough sheet metal had moved by this time that wonky fitment was expected and there was a little hood flutter. Also around this time Rinzler (@TRON_ ) died due to catastrophic hood latch failure so it made sense to play it safe. All of this over the span of a couple years of hard wheeling in between. There was also a small fender bender in there somewhere but there was no visible damage from the accident due to the Pelfrey bumper with full hoops. Truck just dusted itself off and walked away with no damage that could be seen so we're not sure if it added to all of this. Then on a rough patch of a rutted wash, the stock hood latch failed completely just like the picture you posted. The hood lifted about 1.5" and it was just the hood pins holding it down until the wind caught it a few miles later. Tore the pins right out. After all this we looked really closely at the core support (which is believed to be the originating culprit). We found small cracks at multiple stress points and bolt holes right where you'd think they would be. Just a word of caution for everyone, but at the very least another tick mark to add to your routine maintenance.

All we need now is the aftermarket to come up with a beefed up core support for our trucks as the new weakness has shown itself.


I hope OP doesn't mind derailing the thread a bit, but I think we successfully answered his original question.

 

Location 1 for sure

 

I'm certain that the hood latch threw in the towel on the washboards on Race Track road in DV a fwe weeks ago. I replaced the core support bushings with the poly ones last year this month.

my driver side inner core is cracked in 3 separate places.. I also have cracks in my rear passenger door jambs in the upper corners

 

Yup. That's exactly what I'd expect from your truck. Hardcore bud.


I'm a little convinced that someone will make a reinforced core support soon and market it here.