I just had to do the hood spring dance after removing the hood. The hood sheet metal is attached to a plate with rivets. After 70+ years, the rivets got tired and the plate was separating from the hood sheet metal. I had a buddy weld the plate back on to the sheet metal - at the rivets and along the interior side...on both sides (left and right sides) of the hood. The forum above provides an interesting solution of using nickels in the coil to lengthen the coil, but I needed to stretch the springs 1.25". With nickels being 0.070", I would need 17.8 nickels x 2 (one on each side of the spring so the spring stays straight). While placing the nickels in the coils using a persuader to bend the coil, it was difficult to keep all of the nickels in their spot. The solution was to use a floor jack. Place the bottom loop around the jack's axle and the top loop on the jack's dish. Then crank away until you get the right length (for me it was 13.25")...you want only a little bit of the nickel to be in the coil or else it's be tough to get them out (no, the nickels just don't fly off when you close the hood...some do, but most you have to yank out of there). This really worked out ok for me. Jamie Holbrook
