Loose Hood

I was looking at my hood the lastnight and it looks like the
drivers side has a larger space up by front than the passenger
side. The first time I noticed this was after doing my oil change.

When the hood is closed, there is quite a bit of play in it. It
is pretty easy to move up and down by pushing on it. Pushing
down on it closes the gap. I also notice this when I'm driving
because the hood moves up and down at speed on the highway. I
noticed lastnight that when I drop the hood to close it, it
latches and then bounces back up a small amount.

So, I'm thinking there is something wrong with the latch. Is
there any way to adjust the hood latch? I sprayed some WD40 on
it lastnight because it looked pretty rusty, but that didn't
really seem to help. Are there any rubber stops that can be adjusted to help this? I really don't know how this can happen? Is my hood tweaked?

THere are two rubber stops located on top of the radiator support panel behind the headlights. Adjust those to sttop your hood bouncing. You may need to slacken the hinge to bonnet fastening bolts and adjust to get the side to side alignment right.

Not sure about the 94 g20's, but i had the same problem too, at first i thought it was the hood latch, then i realized it was something way more dangerous :huh:.... just playing, i noticed that it was something simple, there is two rubber spacers on the sides of the car in the engine bay, the rubber spacers keep the hood from moving, my spacers are adjustable so i raised them up by twisting them up alittle, and the problem was solved. i guess after a while, from all the vibration the rubber spacers moved, so just adjust them and make sure they are level with each other....did that explanation make sense? :huh:

Thanks for the input. I wll try this out.

Well, adjusting the rubber spacers did not work. It appears that my hood got tweaked for some reason. I would push one side down..then the other side would rise..kinda like teeter-totting on the latch mechanisim. Any ideas?

Originally posted by Blue94G20T
Well, adjusting the rubber spacers did not work. It appears that my hood got tweaked for some reason. I would push one side down..then the other side would rise..kinda like teeter-totting on the latch mechanisim. Any ideas? Sounds like you should be adjusting the rubbers upwards - not downwards. Then they will support the corners.

Originally posted by T4 Primera
Sounds like you should be adjusting the rubbers upwards - not downwards. Then they will support the corners.

hopefully thats what you thought we meant blueg20, i dont see why your hood would still move if the rubber spacers where higher?

Originally posted by G20TurboVisionCrew


hopefully thats what you thought we meant blueg20, i dont see why your hood would still move if the rubber spacers where higher?
Well I tried both. When I raise the rubber spacers so that there is no play, you can see the hood is still higher than the front finders. When I lowered the spacers to the original height, there is play. But when I push down on the hood, it sits flush. I'll try and take some digital pictures today. Thanks for all the help.

it sounds like the latching mechanism is too high up, as when hes pushing on one side the other raises. is there no way of unbolting the latch retaining bolts, and seeing if the mechanism allows for some vertical play??? i.e. can you adjust the height?? never paid any attention to it as ive never had this problem.

I agree, loosen the latch mounting bolts (the bit on the car, not bonnet) and try to move the latch down a bit. If it wont move far enough, you may need to slot the holes out a little.

Originally posted by T4 Primera
I agree, loosen the latch mounting bolts (the bit on the car, not bonnet) and try to move the latch down a bit. If it wont move far enough, you may need to slot the holes out a little.
Thanks P11GT and T4 Primera. I've tried this already but I can't move the latch far enough down. I guess I can take your suggestion and slot the holes out and see if that works.

I realise this is 8 years later but I have the same problem with my new (to me) '95 G20. The hood flew up on the freeway and the seller didn't want to fix the car so I got it cheap.


I know very little about cars, so if this is old news , sorry.

The hood is made from two pieces of metal, the outside smooth pretty piece and the inside multiple compund curves reinforcement piece.

The hood reinforcement sheet metal on the underside of the hood is not welded to the metal on the outside surface of the hood. The hood exterior is simply made oversize, and folded over the inner metal piece at all 4 edges, and glued or epoxied or something to hold it to gether.

I think what happened to the previous owner of my car is, the crimp seam at the front edge of the hood let go, causeing the hood latch to fail to engage, and when she droppped the hood, it seemd latched but really wasn't.

Gets up to freeway speed, hood flies up.

I looked at the original hood and the front seam that's crimped over and glued had separated, causing the catch on the hood to fail to engage the latch on the bezel.

I bought a replacement hood from a car being parted out. Not realising that this separated metal might be a common problem I didn't look at that forward seam, and the replacement hood has the same defect. The used replacement hood will not latch either.

I suppose I could go out and look for another hood, and if I can find one that is intact, I will grind off the epoxy on the front seam and weld it together.

there may be some trick to getting the metal edges back together agian but I can't figure out what it is.

I notice someting simlar with my '93 Escort - the hood latch doesn't want to engage. It will engage if I push rearward on the front edge of the hood as it closes. I think the front edge of the hood can be bent so that the hood latch moves out of position relative to the latch on the radiator bezel. The seam on the front edge of the Escort hood is spot welded every 6" or so, and that seam is still intact.

Here's the point of the story about the Escort:

I had some work done on the Escort engine and afterward, the hood latch would not engage. I fixed it by shimming out the latch on the bezel to move it forward so it engaged the hood latch. While the hood was not latching (before I fixed it) , the hood latch was descending ionto the latch on the bezel, but because the hood latch was too far forward to latch but far enough back to keep the latch hoook open, it was making slack in the hood release cable.

WhenI fixed the latch by getting everything to line up again and the latch to engae properly, the slack in the cable disappeared.

Look at the integrity of the seam on the underside of the front lip of the hood. Maybe the seam has opened up, moving the hood latch out of position.