changing from a 71 grill to a 67-69 grill

[dotcentral]

To anyone that's done this, will the 70-72 style hood release work with the 67-69 grill? Is there any tweaking that I can do to keep my 71 style hood release?

If I need to change over to the 67-69 hood release, will my 71 hood need to be modified?

Finally, I anyone have a pic of a 67-69 grill with the 70-72 hood stainless trim? I figure I will remove the trim and weld the holes closed, but would like an idea of how it would look if I would keep the trim.

[lobuck76]

Iv'e swapped from 70 grille to 69. And will put a 69 ranger grille on my 71 f100 as soon as I come up with some nice, bright headlight doors. I don't recall any issues with the hoodlatch. Seems like I left the hoodlatch panel on the grill when I swapped them out. If I remember right you can't use your '71 headlight buckets with the '69 grill. I'll be leaving the hood trim on mine.

[dotcentral]

I've got everything (I think) from the 69 grill except the hood latch release hardware. A friend had a 67 with a 70 grill (the way hebought it) and drove it for at least a year and never had any problems with the latch, but that was a newer grill on an older truck.

I thought I read that the 67-69 grill on 70-72 truck may cause interference with the hood release, but my memory gets a little fuzzy sometimes.

[FORDification]

There is a difference in the bottom catch, but not in the top latch mechanism. However, the difference is more cosmetic than mechanical. Either one will work with all hoods, you just need to match the bottom catch with an appropriate upper valance panel, since when the lower catch was redesigned they also had to redesign the upper valance panel for clearance.

There are a couple comparison pictures showing the differences on the following page, about 2/3 the way down towards the bottom:

http://www.fordification.com/67-72ID2.htm