Non boaty ... Clio bonnet catches

[VicS]

[ QUOTE ]
You must have a well equipped garage? Do you have an inspection pit?

[/ QUOTE ] I have got more tools than most people. Quite apart from all those I inherited from my father. I have hired an engine crane 2 or 3 times and borrowed a pull lift from work once. I can work on a small car in my present garage but much of it has been done out in the open. I wish I had a pit, it would have made the gearbox removals a lot easier, and those inboard rear brakes! I have a pair of ramps that can be wound up quite high once the car is on them which my father made for me about 40 years ago from a photo in a leaflet from a firm called Hanstock Engineering IIRC. Goodness knows whether they sold many but they deserve to have done, they are brilliant.
A couple of places I worked had pits, one rather improvised, but at the other there was a first class one, unfortunately not under cover though.

 

[Avocet]

On a lot of cars, the bonnet safety catch is a claw which is shaped in such a way that as the bonnet striker hits it, it forces it into the "latched" position. In this way it SHOULD (?!) be impossible to have it fail because if it is so badly seized that it can't move, it will stop the bonnet from shutting correctly, and if it isn't that badly seized, the weight of the bonnet will force it to shut even if the pivot is a bit seized.

For what it's worth, I do check mine regularly and I tend to lubricate the main catch with spray grease if needed. I'd also do the safety catch too if needed, but on my car, it never has. I think the modern ones rely on steel rivets as the pivots and if the rivets are bashed up just a bit too tight, the tiniest bit of corrosion starts them sticking. With enough play in the pivots, this is, of course, impossible!