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I've been a member of Inliners for at least ten years, and a member of the Bulletin Board for about the same length of time, and I just noticed that there's no forum for body parts or body work on the Boards, so I'm putting this here.

My '64 Nova wagon had a broken return spring in the hood latch assembly, and for the last month, finding a replacement spring has been driving me nuts. Of course, when GM built the car, the hood latch assembly wasn't designed so as to be able to replace any of the parts in the assembly. If something went wrong with your hood latch, you went to your friendly local Chevy dealer and ordered a new hood latch assembly. That worked fine until GM stopped making parts for '62-'65 Novas, which probably happened about 35 or 40 years ago. Even NOS parts like hood latches have pretty much dried up. As near as I've been able to find out, none of the places that specialize in Nova reproduction parts make hood latch assemblies or parts for them.

So my only practical option was to find a hood latch assembly at a junk yard. Of course, that produced another problem. Namely, that most junk yards don't have any cars in their yards that are half a century old. However, one of the guys in the Idaho Chariots car club (which I belong to as well as Inliners) told me that there is a junk yard in Mountain Home (about 50 miles from Boise) that specialized in cars no newer than the 1970's. So last week, Ray and I went to Mountain Home and spent a couple of hours (and probably a couple of miles as well) searching the yard for a '62-'65 Nova. Or Impala. Or pickup. What we found was that almost all of the cars from Chevrolet in that age range had the front ends missing. We found a couple of Pontiacs and Buicks that still had the hood latches, but the springs in those are different then the springs in Chevy hood latches (Thank You, General Motors!), so that didn't help any.

We finally found a '61 Chevy wagon that still had the hood latch assembly in it. Of course, the mounting plate for that was different from the Nova, but the internal parts of the hood latch and the return spring for the latch mechanism looked the same as the ones in my Nova. So the guy who owns the junk yard pulled the latch assembly for me, I paid him, and Ray and I went back to Boise.

Today I fired up my die grinder and ground off the rivets holding the hood latch shaft in place on both of the latch assemblies and pulled the broken spring and the good spring out. As I suspected, the springs were identical. So now I have to find a 3/8" shoulder bolt with a 2 1/2" shoulder to replace the riveted shaft in my hood latch assembly. If that's not available (and I think it should be), then Plan B is to have the shaft machined for a #10-32 machine screw, which should be simple for a machine shop to do. And if Plan B doesn't work out, then Plan C is to have a replacement shaft machined out of stainless steel.

In any case, the hood latch assembly should be back in the Nova some time this coming week, and after that, I can put the grill and headlights back in the car and start working on installing bucket seats in the car.


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There is a forum here for "Body & Paint", so I would think that one would be where to post this based on what your describing. Its the one between the "Tech Tips" and "AMC/Jeep" forum.



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Originally Posted By: Wagoneer
So now I have to find a 3/8" shoulder bolt with a 2 1/2" shoulder to replace the riveted shaft in my hood latch assembly. If that's not available (and I think it should be)


I don't believe I have ever seen a 3/8" flange bolt with a 2.5" shoulder:

You'll need a fender washer to fill that much space. Drilling and tapping the old rivet stud is a good idea. It could be done on a drill press with a press vise:


Great post about sort of an intractable issue. Unfortunately, there are a lot of things on old cars that were never intended to be serviced. These parts were designed to last the 'lifetime' of the vehicle. The engineers (from the bye gone past) just never expected guys in 2016 to still be driving/working-on cars that in their minds would have been crushed into scrap decades ago.

regards,
stock49

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Actually, Plan A worked out just fine. I went to Tacoma Screw Products and asked them for a 3/8" diameter shoulder bolt with a 2.5" shaft, and they had one. The head on it is round, and 1/4" thick, and machined for a 3/16" Allen wrench in the center of the bolt head, the shaft is 3/8" x 2.5" with a 5/16-18 threaded section 1/2" long on the end of the smooth part. It fits perfectly in the hood latch assembly. It shouldn't need much, in the way of spacers, but if it does, it will only be on the end with the threads, and I'll be using a 5/16-18 stainless nyloc nut on that end. So possibly one or two 5/16" washers should do the trick.

Friday afternoon of this weekend I sent all the pieces of the hood latch to a shop in Oregon to have them hard chromed. Tomorrow morning I'm taking the bolt over to a place here in town to see if they can coat it with Titanium Nitride. TiN is what is now being used to coat drill bits, and is unbelievably durable. All of this plating should be finished in the next week or two. Then I can get started on installing the seat track adapters for the bucket seats.

You're right about the design of the parts. Back in '64, most cars had a life span of 3 to 5 years before they got traded in, then maybe another few years as a second car or kid's car, then the scrap yard. Stay tuned for further developments. I'm thinking about writing up some of my automotive adventures with this car for the 12 Port News. LOL


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Update:

Okay, it took a while to get all the parts together. Getting the hood latch parts hard chromed took longer than I thought it would, so they were at the shop in Oregon for almost three weeks, then a few more days for shipping back to Idaho. So call it three weeks. When I got the parts back, I was in the middle of installing insulation in a shed that's I'm converting into a workshop, so the parts were assembled and then set aside for a week or two. The new bolt i was using as a shaft for the spring fit perfectly, and the replacement spring fit just fine. The only problem was that the way the hood latch is designed, there really isn't any way to get the short end of the spring (which is the end that activates the latch and holds the hood shut) into the groove in the moving part of the latch assembly.

I went over to Harbor Freight and bought a couple of special long nose pliers and a couple of cheap screwdrivers, then came home and took a Dremel with a diamond cutter and a carbide cutting bit to the screwdrivers and made a couple of spring installation tools out of them. That almost worked. I could get the short end of the spring almost to the groove it needed to fit into, and then it would slip. I kept wrestling with the spring on and off for a week or two, then finally called a guy in my VFW Post who is also into old cars (has a gorgeous '62 Pontiac Bonneville Convertible), and he came over to see what he could do. He couldn't get the spring into the slot either. After a little discussion, both of us attacked the spring. Using four hands and two modified screwdrivers, we finally managed to get the spring into the slot, then tested the hood latch. It now works like a charm.

Next project is to get the new grill installed, and then I can start on the bucket seat installation and exhaust system. Stand by.


Formerly known as 64NovaWagon.

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