From prior posts to this forum........
OK, this has been bothering me for several weeks, and I have tried to collect some info on hood/headlight/front fascia adjustment. From what I gather, it will be one heck of an ordeal. If you look at the picture, there is hardly any gap between the hood and the front right side of the front fascia (portion in front of the wheel well). The hood is currently touching the side of the fascia, and I don't want the paint to eventually chip! Which part, looking at the gap around the headlight, hood, etc., would you try to adjust first? How do you do it?
Open up the hood and take a close look at the hood latch. Mark it and raise it a tad. Close the hood and see if the gap is to your liking. If not, repeat. Then raise the rubber hood stop when you are done.
For every incremental change you do on one side, there will be a slightly smaller incremental change in the opposite direction on the other side. Check and see if the other side has been raised too much. Other than that, these facias sometimes do not come out of the factory very symmetrical. Sometimes you might have to egg out the holes in the inside of the wheel well side of the fascia and try to slide that side of the fascia down to get it to not touch the hood. That is an option I would try to avoid and work with the latches.
I wasn't able to correct the slight contact between the fascia and the hood by adjusting the hood alone. I did make progress, but raising the hood enough to prevent contact after hood slam, the front edge of the hood was raised and looked bad. I had some 3m clear tape on the fascia for weeks to prevent scratching until I got up enough nerve to tackle the fascia removal. It wasn't complicated, just daunting. Getting the pushpins out was a treat without removing the hood, but I did it with the help of a long handle X-mas tree fastener removal tool from Pep boys.
After the pushpins, a few easy access bolts in the grille opening, and a few electrical connectors for the fog lights, the fascia came off easily. There is a bracket that supports the side of the fascia right where you are having the contact. I just loosened the bolts to the bracket and angled it down a bit. You can then put the fascia back on with a few bolts to check it before putting all the push pins back.
Getting the pushpins back in wasn't too bad, but there are 2 pins, 1 each right above the headlight assembly that I gave up on. Never got them back in, but no ill effects. You can barely see them, let alone getting a hand or tool in there and apply a downward force.
Looks to me like the fascia needs to be raised up via the slotted holes behind the fiberglass bumper support, but the headlight pods may "sink" if you do that. To address the hood corner gaps, you can slip a 10 or 11mm wrench in beside the outer pods and the fascia corners. Loosen the two bolts slightly and you can play with that hood/fascia gap.
No, I don't believe I had to enlarge any of the fascia holes. What I did was loosen the inner plastic panel (which has the coolant bottle window in it) and adjusted that enough to get a decent alignment of the fascia wheel well screws. You really don't need much to get the fascia and hood alignment correct. Additionally, since the wheel well screws act like self-tapping, a slight mis-alignment of those screws weren't a problem. Honestly, the hardest part was removing the x-mas tree fasteners under the front edge of the hood. I invented all kinds of crazy profane words during that part, and felt incomplete when I couldn't get the two outer ones back in. (make sure you use new ones, as you'll likely break and/or distort the original ones).
The tool has a "V" type head and a long handle. They are common, you can find them at Northern Tool, or Pep boys/Napa. It's called a long handle door trim removal tool. The short handle version is about 6" long. The long handle version that I have is about 12+" long.
Contrary to what most people have suggested (raising the hood) I think the adjustment needs to be at the outer corners of the fascia. On some cars, it is possible to get a 10 or 11-mm open-end wrench between the headlight bucket and the fascia. There are 2 bolts on each side to loosen, and then the corners can be moved slightly to control the gap. You can gain a little more clearance for the wrench by pulling the fascia screws out of the fender well and pulling the fascia clear of the inner splash shield/core support.
The headlight bucket looks to me like it needs to be shimmed up. Getting to the back nut is a real pain with the fascia on.
That gap should be 4 millimeters. +2MM -1MM tolerance I believe. This doesn't mean they actually come with factory spec tolerances from the factory though! I have seen many with large gaps. Usually the hood is just a hair lower than the fascia in the front though. Not a big deal though. This could be adjusted although vipers are a pain to get everything to factory spec gaps.
When I purchased my Viper three weeks ago, I noticed that the hood rattled slightly on the passengers side at slow speeds and a little at idle. If you picked up on that corner closest to the door, you could actually wiggle it slightly and it would make the same noise.
The hood always fit well, but it was a little tight near the headlights.
So... I adjusted the brackets attached to the frame near the doors, and it came out perfect.
I adjusted it by loosening the two 1/2" bolts and moving the whole bracket about 1/8" forward on the passenger's side. Not only did I get the hood to seat properly, but the alignment is now awesome. No more rattle.
It appeared as though the brackets were aligned this way from the factory, since I found no evidence that they had ever been loosened or shifted before. So I guess you could say it even better than factory now!
