Roller bearing hood hinges! I’ve always wanted to convert my icky old hood hinges that don’t work properly to roller bearings. The factory bushings worked pretty well 40 years ago, but not so much today.
Pretty much every set of hinges I’ve ever come across have been bent and didn’t work right. It both my Celica’s when I pop the hood I have to kind of shake it to get the hood hinge to pop up like it’s supposed to. They’re all bent, and one in my dads Celica has a bolt instead of a rivet holding it together.
The problem is that the bushings are VERY high friction. It’s bare metal on the sliding surfaces, and it only takes a little moisture for those sliding surfaces to rust, causing them to catch and bend the entire hinge. Once they’re bent it’s difficult to get them back straight and in a condition where they will work properly. I’ve always just dealt with it but now I’m fixing it once and for all!
I grabbed one of my hinges and tore it apart. I sandblasted all the rust and paint off. The hard part was that the holes where the rivets are were too big for the inner race of the flange bearing to sit on, and without that mating surface the bearing wouldn’t work properly. To fix that I welded all the holes shut, ground the surface flat, then drilled and tapped the holes for an M6 bolt (same size that holds the fender on).
The bearings in the pictures are too big to use, but the proper bearings are on order. The bearing I’m going to use is a 6x13x5 flanged bearing. I will only need to drill the existing holes out to the proper 13mm size to press the bearings into the swing arm things.
Also, while welding the ball stub onto the throttle linkage, it melted the plastic bushing inside. So I tore that apart and ordered the right size bearings to convert that to roller bearing as well! Roller bearing all the things!!!
The possibility exists that I may manufacture and market these as a complete set in the future, but don’t hold your breath. Too many irons in the fire right now!