As I go through the design and build exercise on my roadster pickup hood, I thought that this sliding hood prop should be shared with other rodders. The 1" square tubes that run from the grillshell to the cowl replace the round rod supports that were stock on early Fords. They support the grillshell, and the one square tube has a piano hinge full length to hinge one side of the hood. ($8 at hardware store). I ran a peice of 3/8" diameter cold rolled steel roundbar between these square tubes about 2" out from the cowl, and anchored it to a small plate tab which is welded to the square tubes. I then drilled out a 3/8" coupling nut ($2 at hardware store) so that it would slide freely over the 3/8" rod. I welded a small plate tab to the coupling nut, and to the reinforcing rod that runs from side to side of the hood. I used 2 spherical rod ends (1/4" diameter, some people call them Heim joints) with a peice of 1/4" dia cold rolled round bar between them, to make the link. The round black thing just behind the slider (coupling nut) is a split 3/8" shaft collar. This thing works really good----as you close the hood, the slider moves along the 3/8" roundbar, untill the hood is shut. When you open the hood, the link pulls the slider in the other direction untill it stops against the shaft collar. You can set how far your hood opens before the coupling nut stops against the shaft collar by moving the collar into whatever position you want, then locking it there with the set screws which are part of it. I have not built a mechanism to latch the hood closed yet, but will make something later this week.
