When hood hinges wear out after decades of use on a classic musclecar, often times the only option is to find another used set of hinges that are in better shape than the hinges you’re replacing. We found a pair of hinges that weren’t worn out, and they were a perfect candidate for our project. As you’ll typically find, they were the wrong color so we had the spring removed so we could media blast the finish and prep it for repainting.
Once the sandblasting was done, we cleaned up the hinges and made sure the media was gone from all the nooks and crannies, and used a quality paint to refinish the hinges. We made sure to open and close them to get maximum paint coverage on all the arms – this is one reason it’s best to remove the springs, the hinge won’t stay closed even if you can muscle it shut.
The next step was to paint the hinge springs, but being closed down tight we knew that we would not get full coverage, and since they are very strong trying to pull them apart to paint was not a simple task. The easiest way to coat the springs was to install them on the hinges where they would be slightly expanded, that would allow the paint to cover the parts of the spring that were inaccessible with the spring compressed.
But putting a spring on a hinge can be a dangerous thing, especially when you don’t have all the right tools – or a helper – to get the job done. But there’s a very safe and simple way to expand the spring far enough to facilitate installation on a hinge, and when you see it you’ll wonder why you didn’t think of that.
We put the spring in a vise, and bent the spring back, flexing it enough to open up a few of the coils. Then we stuck wood screws in between the coils, making sure they wouldn’t interfere with the hinge once installed. After one side is done, simply flip the spring around and flex it the other direction and insert more screws. We found that only five of the screws (per side) was all that was needed to expand the spring enough for installation.
With the screws holding the coils apart, it was a simple install using just a screwdriver as shown in the pictures. Once the spring is installed, simply grab a screwdriver and twist the screws out of the spring, and voilà – the springs are installed and no pinched skin trying to expand a very strong spring. Next, we sprayed the spring being sure to get as much coverage as possible, and since we used the same color as the hinge, overspray was not a problem.
Do you have a cool or simple tip to share with our readers? Post it below, or if you have pictures to share with us, send us an email and tell us what you did to save time and make a difficult job easier.