Hood Springs

[alan32433]

I put the hood on my 48 DeSoto today. It wasn't as hard as I thought it would be. The springs are actually pretty easy. Here's how I did it. The hood was off of course.

With the hinge off the car, hang the spring from its groove on the hinge. With the hinge in the up position (hood open position) lower the hinge into place letting the spring hang down behind the fender. When the hinge is in place, loosely install the rear bolt. Allow the front of the hinge to go down behind the fender as far as it will go. You should be able to attach the bottom of the spring to its mount. If you are on the right side of the car, put the bend of your right elbow under the raised portion of the hinge (part that bolts to the hood) and place your hand on the cowl near the vent. Then with leverage you can push up on the hinge until the front hole lines up and install the front bolt. I did this by myself but if you have a helper it would be even easier.

A few other things I've done. Sand blasted my rims to bare metal, primed with epoxy, then base and clearcoat. Had my new tires mounted and balanced at a local tire shop and then I installed them.

Installed my rear fenders with stainless fender welt. Installing the stainless was tricky but I wouldn't say it was hard.

I included a few pictures. My home made paint job turned out pretty good. It's been compounded but I still need to buff with swirl mark remover for the final finish.

[P-12 Tommy]

The paint job does look great!

Tom

[Greg F]

Looks great, hopefully someday mine will look as nice as yours. Guess I'll need to learn to paint first...

[BobT-47P15]

Looks great Alan.

Nice shop building, too.

[busycoupe]

I love the color of your car! What color is it? I wanted mine to be similar to that, but when the paint was on the car and dry it came out considerably brighter.

Dave

[thrashingcows]

Looking darn fine!!

Thank you for the advice on the hood hinge springs...I'll be removing mine, and re-installing, soon to do the motor swap.

[alan32433]

I love the color of your car! What color is it? I wanted mine to be similar to that, but when the paint was on the car and dry it came out considerably brighter.

Dave

Thanks for the compliments everyone! Sorry for answering late, my wife and I went to Atlanta, spent the night and picked up my bumpers this morning from Southern Bumper Chrome. They did a fantastic job! Front and rear bumpers, plus 4 guards were $1040,, ouch! If you need plating, you might want to get it done soon. The plater claims the price on nickle (one of the main ingredients in triple chrome) went up 400% last year and will of course keep going up.

Dave, the paint color was "Royal Maroon" which is one of the original colors for DeSoto. The paint was a base coat clear coat system. The base coat came from TCP Global. You can find them on the net. They have original color chips for all the years and match the original paint very closely. You can access their chip library online too. The clear was House of Kolor urethane.

Alan