The hood I’ll be using came from the silver Biscayne, it’s a reasonably decent hood, no rust issues at all but it does have a bent area at the lower drivers side front leading edge, and a low spot on the passenger side body line. If I had a better hood available to me, I’d use that instead but this one will be an easy fix, so no big deal.
The damage to the front looks to have been caused by a driver having run into a piece of pipe that was solidly affixed to something. The aluminum trim shows the imprint of about a 1 inch diameter piece of tubing, which smooshed the trim and pushed the hood back in that area about 1/8″. This caused the vertical area of metal behind the trim to become stretched at the bottom edge. So no matter how much pushing you do, it won’t fix the problem. The solution was easy though. Just make a cut with the cutoff wheel and squeeze the area together, then weld it back up.
The result… right back where it belongs! Tiny skim of filler and it’ll be good to go.
The other damage was on the top of the hood along the passenger side rib body-line. Luckily, the center of the dent was not hidden under any of the underside bracing structure, so I was able to slam a 2×4 under it with a smooth beveled edge on it that cradles inside that rib shape, then close the hood on it, putting my weight into it a little bit at a time… checking and re-checking to make sure I don’t go too far. Didn’t take too many tries and its pretty much gone. I’ll skim the area with filler and it will disappear completely.
