anyone seen a car with one of these? in theory it will work similar to the electric hatch. this will allow for my remote hood as well as save the hassles associated with the hood not always opening upon first pull of the stock cable.

any ideas?

 

I would imagine you just need to remove the hood latch, find a power hatch setup from a donor car, and then with a little fabrication drop it in between the airboxes and wire it up. Although, if you ever had the motor go out on you it would be .. a very bad thing. The hard part would be ensuring that the hood would raise up all the way when you hit the button. This would require you to get longer hood struts and rig them up in a similar fashion to the ones in the hatch. In fact, hatch struts could possibly work. This idea would also probably work best/easiest with a fiberglass hood. Great idea though. I'm sure there are other ways to accomplish this so post up guys...

 

well my idea uses something similar to the rear motor assembly. a safety pull assembly as back up much like the stock cable setup. using a fiberglass hood mainly so i can automate the entire hood i'd use some sort of hydraulic arm setup from company like auto.loc and tie it into a remote with a relay.

i think it would work.

 

the way ive seen it done, the hood is raised by the "electric ram" after its been popped.

the 2nd latch, that you get with your hand, was removed.
the stock cable pull was retained, but a 'noid, similar to a door noid or the stock trunk release was added.


the ram just pushed.. gravity held the hood to the ram.... this way, if somthing happened, you could pop the hood and lift it up quickly.. even if the motor was still going up.



personally, i think it sounds cooler then it looks.... its nothign special to look at (IMO)

 

sounds like a good idea

 

Damn and I thought I was the only one with these weirdo trunk motor ideas. Hahahah!!! I had planned to do just like you guys said, modified a hatch pulldown motor setup right in between the air boxes. I had planned to rig the stock hood release pull lever thing to activate the same "noid" (hahah!) used in the trunk motor. With my glass hood and good hood struts the hood will lift on its own with a little nudge. I wanted to do this more for closing the hood than opening it though. I hate having to use force to put the hood down (even though its not much force it all, still makes me wonder if the fiberglass will crack over time).

My other weirdo front motor idea was to use two of the trunk motors and fab up some tracks and make retractable driving lights. So when you turn em on the motors go down and they become viewable. Turn em off and the motors go up and the driving lights are out of sight. Heheheh!!

 

Bond.... James Bond...

Kandied, one idea to keep some element of safety involved would be to keep the main cable pull handle. Remove the safety latch. Mount a micro switch near the cable pull mechanism under the hood.

Under normal operation, the cable would be pulled and held for a small amount of time in order for the actuators to operate enough to clear the latch mechanism. The pressure of the actuators would be enough to keep the hood closed, but in the event of a hardware failure, the stock hood release latch would be your safety. You could even go so far as to use a lock solenoid to pull the stock latch lever, so long as the solenoid would pull a long enough period of time for the stock latch to clear.

 

I was looking at linear actuators and couldn't find any that would find inside the stock strut location. Although I didn't look for more than a half hour or so...

I thought of this when the auto-hatch idea came up. The trunk on my car is so small it's pointless to do something like that to it. Now if I could make it open farther that would be cool.

MrDude; do the maro verts trunks open just as little as the birds do?

 

i donno.. ive never had a problem putting stuff in the small trunk, so i never noticed.


it probly opens as far as it can without the tips of the corners hitting the cover.

 

all good ideas, keep them coming. basically just trying to find a better way then the standard "drop and slam" with these hoods. i figure if i reverse the hood and use an electric latch mechanism much like the rear assembly i would be good. this will also give me room for the actuators.

 

I have thought about this for a while now with moving the rear pull down hatch mechanism and mount it up front with all the necessary hardware to make the hood work just like the rear hatch. So you just push the hood down until the contacts meet and the pull down assembly does the rest. Would be interesting to see if anyone does it.

 

ive mentioned it before but I dont think there would be enough room in the bay for it to be practical in this application (or any application :P)
but my favorite is one i saw on a dodge charger, where the guy had 4 electric rams raise the entire hood straight up, then it all shifted back so about half of the hood was over the roof.. activated by remote too... i have a video of it somewhere ill have to find it

anyways not using the safety latch on a remote activated hood sounds like an accident waiting to happen, i would keep the safety

and as far as the slamming the hood thing, is that a camaro thing?? ive noticed they are hard to shut, my bird hood closes with light pressure

 

just a generalization....i want my hood to close smoother like the hatch. it should be possible....i guess i'll see what happens.

 

This sounds like a great idea! One thing that I'm concerned about though.... would it lock the hood in as safely as the stocker? Think about 5 miles of open highway and how fast you might get up there in speeds.... about the last thing you'd need would be your hood flying open at 160+MPH

 

i would assume so if it works for the hatch....

 

If u use actuators you better be careful, people usually only use one because if u use 2 you have to be able to make them open and close at the exact same time. Lets say the hoods opening and one actuator fails and the other one keeps going....yea the sound of twisting metal isn't what you want to hear.

 

i wouldn't see why one wouldn't be enough? look at how the trunk is held down...it doesn't move or twist. using a latch mechanism anyhow, this would just be to lower it down and close tightly without dropping the hood or other common bs associated with our hoods. no matter how good condition the things has to be played with sometimes and it gets old. it's nothing a $10 junkyard part couldn't fix with a little work..... i hope.