I have been procrastinating replacing my hood springs. Those who have followed my 41 restoration know that a large wooden 3' dowel has been supporting my hood for several months. My past experience with hood springs is that the confined space they are in and the unpredictability of what might happen when dealing with a large spring is not for the faint of heart. While looking through the Chevs of the 40's on-line part catalog I saw they carried a tool to remove and replace hood springs. Tool Hood Spring. The tool comes with the following instruction sheet:Instruction Sheet.

Being frugal I asked a good friend with a lot of welding and fabricating experience to make me the tool. I used it to put my driver's side spring on. While I got it to work I did find it very clumsy to deal with, hard to remove with the spring in place, and I scratched my paint in a few areas. So I decided to try stretching the spring with a hydraulic floor jack, like shown in the Chevs of the 40's instructions, but placing 1/16" washers between each spring loop. When I removed the spring from the jack the spring was no longer straight but had a substantial curve to it. To remedy this I alternated how I installed the washers. I rotated what side of the spring each washer was installed on, so if I used 20 washers 10 were installed from the right side of the spring and 10 from the left. You need only enough washers to expand the spring TO about 14".

Hope this helps others deal with spring issues. If you have another way of dealing with the problem, please let us know.

Thanks, Mike

P.S. I used this method about 12 year ago but did not remove the washers for 6 months. When I went to reuse the spring it had stretched to the point it was no longer usable.

I used that method on my '57 years ago. Worked great except I had to use a pliers to pull out the washers.
Also bent spring sideways to open coils and insert washers.

In installing the spring, I use the redneck method. That is I use a stout screwdriver (flat or phillips end, whatever, doesn't matter. I merely hang the upper end of the spring and hook the bottom end on the screwdriver shaft. Then I place the tip of the screwdriver on the bottom of the hanger and then push down on the screwdriver. When the spring gets low enough it will slip right on the hanger. Piece o' cake. Never had one fly or pop off.

While I would not recommend this method, it works well for me. After all where can the spring go but on the hedge. Not rocket science. One has to merely get over the seeming danger of stretching the stout spring. A natural fear, granted, but no real concern.

You don't need to buy no stinkin tool or make one. If you're afraid of doing it my way yourself then get the missus to do it for you whilst you cringe and hide somewhere out of reach of the sprung spring. Next county would be about right.

In any case the spring has to be stretched sufficiently to go on the hedge. Might as well grit your teeth, man up a get-er-done.

Only experence with this stupid method has been with 41 hood springs.

Charlie

Makes sense...same as brake band spring