Hood alignment help

Hi all,

I recently removed and replaced my hood and I’ve noticed an increased gap on the driver side vs. the passenger side that wasn’t there before. From what I’ve researched most people have issues with the up/down alignment that’s adjusted with the rubber stopper.

Is there an easy way to adjust the side to side alignment of the hood? It doesn’t appear that the 4 bolts on the hinges allow for much adjustment but perhaps I reinstalled them at an incorrect angle?

Below are some pics - you can see the the rubber piece in the channels of the hood are more prominent on the driver side vs passenger side. Any insight would help!

 

The 2 bolt on each side should auto align the hood. Did you get an aftermarket hood? Maybe that’s why? I’ve swap hood and install ditch light bracket before and both hood auto align perfectly.

 

Nope it’s the same OEM hood I’ve always had!

 

I saw the word replaced so I assume you got a new hood. My bad.
Only thing I can think of is, tighten by hand (fingers), close hood not all the way, align, lift up and tighten 1 bolt, close hood not all the way, adjust, Repeat until evenly align? Then tighten all bolt?

 

I found this :

http://www.ttguide.net/adjustment-1827.html

which is exactly what I’m trying to do but it says the replace the centering bolts with standard bolts…no idea if this means I can’t adjust the hood with the hardware that came with it or not

 

What it mean is, get a standard bolt (bring one to Home Depot and match it) and manually adjust it like I mention above. The bolt that come with it auto center ur hood but it’s off for what ever reason. I can tell u it’s gonna be a pain in the rear doing this lol.

 

I've removed my share of hoods and before I loosen any fastener I mark the area around the brackets with tape so I can reposition the bracket in it's original spot. Since you don't have that luxury tighten the fasteners enough so you can still move the front of the hood left to right with out losing the position. I also place foam between the fender and the hood to keep both gaps even to help with alignment. If you don't have foam or something non marring you can use cardboard as shims. Good luck

 

The issue I’m running into is the hinge that the bolts go through to secure the hood allow ZERO movement even with the bolts extremely loose. There’s a few millimeters of forward or backward movement but no give from side to side

 

did you remove the hinge?

 

not from the body of the truck, no. Just undid the 4 bolts on the top parts of the hinges that allows the hood to open and close. I was super careful not to move anything, I even had two other people help me and hold everything in place.

 

Good to hear. If there is no other adjustment what I have done is to physically force the alignment to center the hood. I have never done any hood work on my Tacoma but on past trucks I had to resort to that as a last effort.Can't say why yours is not going back to stock alignment.

 

Is one bolt holes on hinge oblong?

 

I’m not sure. I believe they were all the same size but I didn’t specifically check. If one being oblong means something in terms of adjustment I could take all of them out again and check

 

Id take one side out and check

 

just to be clear you mean the one of the holes on the hinges might be oblong shaped and not one of the actual bolts right (one longer than the other)?

 

Yeah on the hinge.

 

One thing I may mention here, the hood gap may be just fine?

Is it possible the hood is in the same position as the old one except now you are really seeing the gaps close up for the first time due to the switch?

Not saying your case, but I cannot tell you how many people I dealt with over the years at body shops who said something was not right on their car after repaired when it was. Especially full frame vehicles since the tolerances for gaps is not the same as unibody. I would compare their vehicle to brand new, practically measure gaps and they still fight and say it was wrong.

Maybe check a few other trucks to see what they look like.

Just a thought.

 

Had this happen when I installed ditch lights. I adjusted the bolts and its back to normal now

 

It’s certainly possible, I will admit that I looked more closely after reinstalling the hood. The only thing that makes me question it is the rubber stopper thing on the inside channel is far more visible which I’m sure I would have noticed before and according to the service manual it’s way out of the clearance standards. The gap is almost 5mm+ in some areas….unless I’m misunderstanding how it’s supposed to be measured?

 

is there a certain angle you had the hood at when you adjusted it? Did you just loosen all 4 bolts and move the hood around?