Core Support - Inner/outer fenders - hood tutorial?

[Whoaaanelly]

Hey, I've got all this off and am getting ready to reinstall everything -- just hoping someone who's done it can give me heads up on getting all of this stuff aligned right the first time. I'm sure I'll figure it out, but would love a short-cut since time (my vacation) is almost up.

Added: There were 8 shims on the passenger side and none on the driver side core support, but the bottom rubber/washer/nut thing was missing on that side too. So until my new ones get here I'll be shimming/bolting with something I can find. So I guess my question is: Do I even bother with the shims until every thing is bolted up "loosely" and then start adding shims until the back side of the fenders line up with the doors and the body lines all run parallel and then tighten every thing up? And then align the hood? That's how I've reasoned so far how to do it. I could do my 56 in my sleep, which was way wacky-er. Any advice is welcomed.

[rjewkes]

looking good so far.

[fordman]

yea loosely bolt eveything on and then add the shims in the front to even u and line lines up. the hood will go on last.

[Whoaaanelly]

Well, I think I have a fail-safe way to get all these parts installed. Fordman is correct, the secret is leaving things loose while you tweak things, but here's a step by step I came up and the reasons for each step. I'll preface this project by saying its well worth the money to replace all the fender nuts and bolts or at the very least chase all the threads and clean up all the bolts. You don't want to fight trying to turn all the bolts in using a ratchet. I used the rachet only when I was ready to tighten.

1) First install the inner fender-wells leaving the 3 bolts on each semi-snug, but loose enough you can still move them. Securely bolt on the core support to the inner fenders. Put the bolts and rubber spacers under the core support, but leave them as loose as possible.

2) Next "dry-fit" the fenders to see if there is any shimming needed on the door/fender area. By dry-fit I mean don't use any strip caulk yet. You're only checking for the fit. If you have to shim, determine how many washers you'll need and tape them to the cowl using a good tape that will hold them in place while you bolt on the fender.

3) It's obvious to me that the fit of the fender to the cowl is a "non-adjustable" thing; meaning, the cowl is fixed and the fender must match it. So I applied strip caulk to the inner fenders over the top and down the front. I then put in the bolt in the door pocket and lower fender rear -- both loosely. I temporarily tightened one bolt in the front of each fender to tie it to the core support. I then put a floor jack under the core support and raised the front until the rear of the fender was parallel to the cowl. When it is, tighten the door pocket bolt and add shims as needed on the core support on the side you just did. Now repeat for the other fender. Shim and tighten the lower rear fenders at this time as well.

4) Install the upper valance and loosely install all the fender bolts across the top and the two in the front of the fenders. Don't install the upper valance brackets yet.

5) Install the hood and adjust it to match the cowl, which again is a "fixed" thing to adjust to. Once you've got the back of the hood lined up, lower it and check the left/right position of the hood as it relates to the fenders. On mine, the fender/core support assy was shifted a lot to the driver side, so what I did was drop two 2" long 7/16" bolts with spacers and nuts into the core support base (where the lower valance would bolt) and used bar-clamps between these bolts and the frame to pull the entire fender/core support assy to the side it needed it to go -- checking the hood alignment until it was where it needed to be in relation to it.

6) When the hood and fenders were all aligned, I then tightened the core support to frame bolts and tightens all the inner and outer fender bolts EXCEPT for the bolts going down the front of the fenders. This locked the fenders in place and I could safely remove the bar-clamps without fear of the fenders shifting.

7) Now bolt the lower valance in place and only tighten the lower two fender to lower valance bolts until you've got both sides attached and matching the fender. Leaving the upper front fender bolts loose (as noted in step 6) allows you to shift the lower front of the fenders to center the lower valance to match the frame and core support mounting holes. When you've got these lower valance to core support bolts in place you can now tighten the front fender bolts to lock the lower valance into its left/right position.

8] Now bolt on the hood latch assembly and the upper valance brackets. I converted to the later model lower latch assembly for the upper valance as opposed to two individual rods. This was a give-me from a wrecker... and is much cleaner to install. It appears that the hood latch adjusts left/right and the upper valance assembly is for the up/down adjustment, so I lowered the hood slowly to see if it aligned. It didn't, so I loosened these hood latch bolts and shifted the hood latch to match the lower assy. I then raised the lower assy as high as it could go to begin with and checked/adjusted/checked/adjusted tightening ONLY the hidden bolts (that go into the upper valance) until the hood was latching correctly. Only then did I tighten the front facing core support latch bolts. The reason for this was to not have a whole series of scratches from the bolt heads in my freshly painted latch.

Well, that's about it. It's all together now and looks great. I'll probably read this again in the morning after having slept and try to fill in where I think it needs filling.