Neira Posted July 2, 2023 Report Share Posted July 2, 2023 It’s been a little struggle to find replacement hood latch springs for my ‘41 Dodge. My project had two broken springs (out of the four needed). I was fortunate enough to find one on EBay. I discovered one of the broken ends in the engine compartment so I figured I’d try to reconstruct the remaining one. When removing one of the broken springs the tab on the latch broke giving me a separate weld repair to accomplish. Here’s my pictorial on how the repairs went. I’ll try and get them in basic sequential order. I TIG welded the repairs. I’m sure the spring could use some heat treatment but it seems to work again. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Neira Posted July 2, 2023 Author Report Share Posted July 2, 2023 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Neira Posted July 2, 2023 Author Report Share Posted July 2, 2023 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Neira Posted July 2, 2023 Author Report Share Posted July 2, 2023 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Neira Posted July 2, 2023 Author Report Share Posted July 2, 2023 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
9 foot box Posted July 2, 2023 Report Share Posted July 2, 2023 Nice job. I’ve made a few springs with piano wire. After bending, I put them in the oven when my wife bakes a frozen pie. 425* for an hour and leave them in the oven after the pie is removed, to cool slowly. Rick D. 5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vintage6t Posted July 2, 2023 Report Share Posted July 2, 2023 Nice work. It will be interesting to see how well the spring repair lasts. I would think the welded point is probably stronger than the rest of the spring, so my guess is a good long time. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Neira Posted July 2, 2023 Author Report Share Posted July 2, 2023 (edited) 15 hours ago, 9 foot box said: Nice job. I’ve made a few springs with piano wire. After bending, I put them in the oven when my wife bakes a frozen pie. 425* for an hour and leave them in the oven after the pie is removed, to cool slowly. Rick D. I’ll have to pick up some of that piano wire. Thanks for the tip. Where did you source the flat strips from? Any certain material properties on the strips (e.g. spring steel, etc.)? Or maybe they’re annealed strips and you heat treat them after to get spring properties back in them? I’m sure I’ll have to get fairly good at this since there are bound to be more broken springs someday (everything being 80+ years old and all). I believe the door latches use similar type of springs. Edited July 2, 2023 by Neira Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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