Hood Nut issue

[tparker]

Not sure what this piece is called, but it's essentially the nut on the hood. It seems these are welded on the inside or something. One of mine fell off and I forgot to fix it prior to painting the hood. I didn't remember until I tried to put the hood back on and there was nothing to screw it back into. I ended up just getting a nut from the hardware store and using that. The trick was it is almost impossible to get to it. I ended up using foot or so piece of 6 or 8 gauge piece of wire and taped a rare earth magnet to the tip. I stuck the nut onto that and threaded it through the air vent. It was a pain to align it since the hood curves and the magnet wants to stick to the hood, but I got it in about 5-10 minutes.

Anyways, this is a hack. has anyone else fixed it and how did they go about it?

[headejm]

 

Got any photos?

[tparker]

Here are some photos. The nut has the old bolt still in it where it broke off. It's that rectangle piece. This is inside of the hood. The only way to get to it is through the center of the hood where the vent is. I taped a magnet to a piece of wire (under the blue tape) and put the nut on the end and used that to push it through to get to where the hood is bolted to the hinge. I was able to line it up just enough to thread the bolt through it.

I was Just curious if anyone else had the same issue and how they fixed it.

[Dakota]

I had the same issue with a hinge bolt on the body side.   Those nuts are called cage nuts, capture nuts, or sliding nuts.   

Here's the thread on the repair/replacement:

https://forum.e-bodies.org/body-shop/5/help-needed-hood-hinge-captive-nut-repairreplacement-fixed/7327/msg106460#msg106460

[anlauto]

You forgot to mention the boat load of patience it must have taken you 

[tparker]

@Dakota it's not a nut like the one in the photo, but the idea is the same.

@anlauto lol. It actually didn't take me as long as I thought it would. It started out bad but I got lucky with a second pair of hands. I was able to line the nut up with the hole with some doing, but I didn't have an extra hand to line the hood up with the hinge. So I called the wife in to help push the hood down into alignment so I could thread the bolt on. Took me more time to fish out the nut out of the corner it fell into, which is where I got the idea of the magnet.