w123 hood spring repair
 

Ever since I've owned my car I've had to carry a prop rod for the hood since the mounts were rusted off for the springs. The cavities aren't rusty at all, just the spring mounts, they were full of leaves when I bought the car.
Anyway, I had the hood fall on my head while changing the oil today which made me angry enough to actually fix the problem...

I took these pictures with my phone and they kinda suck, sorry... Shoulda grabbed my camera.

First I removed the arm the spring attaches to, you have to remove this little clip. Pull up on the tab and yank it off with a angled pick (my car isn't rusty, so it might be harder on a rusty one...). I had to tap the pin out with a hammer and punch, had to remove the battery on the passenger side.
http://i.imgur.com/sCYTt1Mh.jpg


Next I used a die grinder with an abrasive pad to clean up the area where the spring mount should be. It's a long way back and really difficult to work in there.
http://i.imgur.com/9BoYLD8h.jpg

I needed a new loop so I cut a link of chain in half to make some loops, hooks on the springs grab them nicely, they're beefy steel, and already the right shape. Also since I couldn't fit the gas nozzle on my MIG welder in there to weld, I had to use flux core, the large chain link helped to avoid burning through the sheet metal into the car.
http://i.imgur.com/UWqvqyCh.jpg

Finally I had to play quite the tetris game to hold the link in place to weld. Needle-nose visegrips holding the chain link, regular visegrips holding the needlenose, and my ground clamped to that. I also removed all the interior so I could see the back side of where I was welding in the case of a fire. I only welded for a few seconds, then cooled the area with an air hose before moving on. Don't set your car on fire...
http://i.imgur.com/GjsU9l3h.jpg


And at long last, my hood stays up on its own :D
http://i.imgur.com/yx0y2p0h.jpg

(yes, I need a new hood pad, thanks for noticing)

Finally threw the keys to my photobucket account in the well and changed to imgur... hopefully the pics show up now.

I now see pics
 

I had better keep those drains clean
Doesn't look like a lot of fun


snapped_bolt