front shocks contacting hood

[bradplock]

hey guys, i bought my 95 gt with hotchkis c/c plates and kyb agx shocks up front. since i've had it the top of the shock bore has dug a hole into the underside of the hood. a lot on the driver side, just a slight nick on the passenger side. i know the c/c needs adjustment because the inside of the treads are bald. but, correcting this would mean pulling the shocks away from the engine right? if i do that, it will make the damage worse. i took the shocks out, and pulled up hotchkis' instructions. I have the correct, bushings, washers and sleeves on the shock. Any ideas? Perhaps the shock bore is too long?

[jkellam]

If it is of no concern, just cut out the under side of the hood. There is probably about 1" of clearance betwwen the top and bottom layer.

Some cc plates sit up higher and some shocks have longer threaded shafts, nothing wrong with your car in particular, unless your hood is sitting low...

[bradplock]

i thought that, just remove the fiberglass that's in the way. I probably will. I think my shocks have a really long threaded area on them. in a lot of the install tutorials i see, the shocks threaded area is about half as long as what I have on mine. In the instructions on hotchkis's site, it says to add no more than 3 washers on top of the sleeve. wonder if i could add more seeing as I have such a long bore????

[AdderMk2]

sounds to me like you DIDNT install the plates correctly

[bradplock]

sure they are Adder, how many different ways can they be put on? I didnt install the plates myself, they were on there when i bought the car. But, you do bring up an excellent point, i'll have a look and compare to the instructions.

[PGreenSVT]

Add some spacers to the strut under the cc plate to bring the amount of strut shaft protuding through the CC plate down.

[jkellam]

The only problem with doing that is you are lowering the bump spacing on the strut. If it is only a street car, no problem.

[LILBLKSNAKE]

That happened to me with my Steeda Caster/Camber plates and it turned out to be a bad plate. The clip that holds the bearing into the plate was busted and the strut/cc plate was hopping up and hitting the hood.
It gouged a nice hole in my 97 COBRA hood.

[MFE]

All it needs is to rearrange the spacers on the strut shaft so you put a small one from underneath the c/c plate on top of it instead, moving the top of the shaft down. 1/4 inch should be plenty, and it's not going to really affect the operation of the car at all.

[The_Mustang]

That's exactly what I was thinking MFE. These kits usually come with an assortment of those spacer rings to tailor fit them to your setup. While most of our cars will have the same dimensions, some will not, so moving spacers around will achieve what you want.

[bradplock]

got it! thanks guys! i had another set of sleeves laying around. So i put an extra sleeve on each side. So now there's 2 sleeves and one washer on each side. brought the shaft down to a much more respectable height. one day i hope to get a different hood, still have stock now. so i wanted to get this taken care of before i bore a hole in a new hood! thanks again guys!