Front end alignment

[s13sickboi]

im having some alignment issues with my front end, Seems like eveything is wacked on the front and its starting to drive me crazy, especially when i see nice s13's with perfect alignment. This has totally baffled me. help? ive searched but all i can find is threads on wheel alignment lol.

i threw these on and it still didnt help,


heres pics of the verdict:






any suggestions? im pretty stumped. i thought that all of these parts are mounted so they are not adjustable to any degree... maybe my hood is warped?

[LoserCard]

First off, it kind of seems like your bumper is sagging. Possibly from previous frontal damage. Therefore, if you fixed that, you could raise your hood latch which raises your hood and those lines would match up. Then you would have to lift up the headlight covers.

[94_240sx]

I spent a LOT of time doing this, so I've got some experience.

1. Hood: Raise the hood latch just like LoserCard said. When you adjust the hood left and right hit the striker(?) with the hammer left and right or move the latch left and right.

2. Headlights: Before raising the covers, make sure they come up evenly by adjusting the rod and rubber stopper in the back of the headlights. Rod is 26034 & 26084 in below pic.


3. Bumper: If you remove headlight trim and headlights, you will have access to bolts(2 on each side) that hold the front bumper reinforcement. Loosen them and jack up the front bumper a little and tighten them. That's how I adjusted mine.

[s13sickboi]

thanks for the advice! i already tried raising the hood latch, its up as high as it will go. thats why im thinking that maybe my hood is warped. when my buddy did the KA swap he removed the hood and left it on the ground for a few weeks... but who knows. ill try raising the light covers and see if i can at least get them straight.

[LoserCard]

Well if your hood is all the way up, see if you can move your hood forward by loosening the hinges. They have a little play in them sometimes. This should even up the curvature of the hood with the curve of the fenders a little more.

[s13sickboi]

Thank you guys so much. It still doesnt line up perfectly yet, but with the tips you guys gave me i was able to line things up WAAAAAY better! turns out my hood is warped. i loosened the hood bolts and moved it forward and moved the hood latch all the way down and there is still some gap between it and the bumper. Had to bend the hood at the corners a little bit...

And i pushed the bumper up as high as it will go. messed with the headlight covers a bit, (one is dented pretty badly) and i am pretty happy how it came out!

Hope this helps the noobies in the future

[tyrodtom]

Every part on that front end is put on with bolts, but the holes they go thru are oversized, so there is a endless possibility of adjustmrnts you can make. Warp things only as a last resort.
He probably took the hood off without marking the bolts, you can usually tell exactly where they go in the oversized holes by the paint around the bolt washer.

[s13sickboi]

understood. but the hood was clearly warped.