Willy's 55 Gasser.....Cutting The Hood and Setting The Fenders....

2Loose Willy's Gasser Project, .....................

Whacked a big hole in the hood.....

First I made up a template, transferred it to the hood, and then carefully cut it out using a 4-1/2" cut off disk, cutting very small bits at a time, cooling it immediately with air, moving around a lot to spread out the heat, and it came out without any distortion.

When I marked up the template, I did not know for sure if I needed clearance for the blower pulley or not. So I marked it just in case, but only cut for the carbs for now. I cut it close, will trim it out later when I add the raised edges to the opening.

This is a spare hood I got from Steve (steves55) at Chevytalk, Thanks Steve....

I got it right on the first try! It clears the two carbs, there is room for the throttle linkage with only a slight amount of trimming, and the hood clears the blower pulley and belt by about half an inch, enough!!!

One problem I saw was that with my proposed hinge point for the flip front end being so low in front, the back of the hood would arc forward quite a bit when opening the front, so I had to plan on cutting the hood all the way back to the firewall to make that work once I put a scoop and air filters on the carbs! Not a problem, I worked that out as I went.

And I do have hood clearance for my new radiator now that it sits lower in the frame pockets I just added. Yup, I did put the radiator in to make sure it fits!!!

Decided to pin the hood to the fenders so I can pull the hood off if I want, and the hood will "flip" forward with the fenders when it is on the car.

Made up some rear pins to bolt on the hinge location using some 1/2" bolts, some nuts, and some scraps I had around the shop. Whacked the bolt heads off, rounded off the ends, and drilled some holes for the retaining pins....

They look pretty good there, now I need some brackets for the front to mount a pair of pins there....

This is what I came up with for the front.....

Added some brackets to match up with the hood pins on the back of the fenders....

This sure is a rusty old beast....

And added some brackets to match up with the front hood pins, on the sub-frame behind the grill....

I managed to get it all aligned correctly and the hood pins drop in place nicely, adjusted the length for a nice tight fit when the pins are in.

Here's the right side rear pin viewed from under the car....

And the right side front pin....

It flips up and down nicely, and is quite solid. The back of the hood hole did hit the rear carb, so I had to enlarge that opening all the way back to the cowl, which required that I reinforce the opening. These tubes are bolted to the underside of the "hood bird" up in front, I upgraded the bird bolts to 1/4"....