Anyone have issues with the hood latch strikers being loose and how to fix. While I was spending the day flushing my radiator inside and out today, I found my right hand hood latch striker was loose. Tried to turn the nut it runs through but it did not want to turn. Thought better to stop and ask you guys first. The only way I could get it to latch was to pull out as far as it would go and wrap it a couple of times with electrical tape. After it was latched and locked the hood was still loose on the right hand side but latched solidly on the drivers side. By the way the car runs much cooler now since I gave the radiator a good cleaning. Glad I noticed it running warmer sooner, and not waiting till full summer here for it to overheat later.

 

Apply a few drops of penetrating oil (Liquid Wrench, WD-40, or similar) to the nut and let it soak overnight to cut through the rust. That should free up the nut so you can turn it to adjust the striker height.

 

Yep, and without looking I'm going to assume that there's another nut on the bottom of the panel and that's the one that came loose allowing the latch to rise which allows the hood to be loose.

I used a 1.5" plastic pipe brush to clean the crap from between my radiators and got a tone of sand, dirt, grass clippings and dead insects out.