whateg01
Member
I'm new here, but I've searched the web, including here, and am just not finding much, so here goes. Dad has a 67 Coronet R/T that has been frame off restored. All is good except the trunk lid won't stay open. I've talked to a bunch of owners at various shows and everybody says it should. Well, yeah. That's why I'm looking for a way to make it happen. I didn't do the work on it; he and my brother did. He says that it stayed up until he put the rear trim panel on. I don't know how much filler is in it, but IIRC, it was pretty straight before, so there shouldn't be much. He has replaced the torsion rods with a set that came off of another car where the trunk lid did stay open. The diameter is ~0.406". Neither set will keep the trunk lid open. I've had people tell me that it's because the little nylon blocks are missing, but they aren't. I have had people tell me to use the adjustment slots, but it's on the "strongest" setting now.
I've found people running into this issue on other car models, and they have cut the torsion rods and welded them back together. Or they have cobbled in some gas struts. We are trying to keep this as close to original as possible. I brought one of the torsion rods home and measured the spring rate. At about 110 degrees of rotation, there's about 94 lb*ft of torsion.
With a luggage scale, I figured out that at the back edge of the trunk lid, there needs to be about 13# of additional lift. I don't remember the depth of the lid to the pivot, but ballpark says that's an additional 50 lb*ft needed total, or 25 per torsion rod. It's not a 1:1 because of the ramp on the hinge, but regardless, it appears that there would need to be a lot of additional spring needed. Other cars had different torsion rods for different configurations, like a stronger one for a car with a factory spoiler. I don't see any mention of such a thing on these cars, though. Is this something odd? Or is it just not talked about? Something just seems off.
I've found people running into this issue on other car models, and they have cut the torsion rods and welded them back together. Or they have cobbled in some gas struts. We are trying to keep this as close to original as possible. I brought one of the torsion rods home and measured the spring rate. At about 110 degrees of rotation, there's about 94 lb*ft of torsion.
With a luggage scale, I figured out that at the back edge of the trunk lid, there needs to be about 13# of additional lift. I don't remember the depth of the lid to the pivot, but ballpark says that's an additional 50 lb*ft needed total, or 25 per torsion rod. It's not a 1:1 because of the ramp on the hinge, but regardless, it appears that there would need to be a lot of additional spring needed. Other cars had different torsion rods for different configurations, like a stronger one for a car with a factory spoiler. I don't see any mention of such a thing on these cars, though. Is this something odd? Or is it just not talked about? Something just seems off.
