Well I finished up the right side wheel hole and I decided to get up off of the floor for a little bit. There are a number things I needed to work out relative to the hood. The first was locating the gas pistons and seeing if the ones that came on the LX would work . Using some 2"x 2" square stock I made to stand offs from the inner engine compartment. The 70 hood is much narrower than the LX hood so I had to bring the piston pick up points in about 4". I plated the ends of the 2x2 with 3/16th steel and tapped it .This allowed me to screw the pick up balls right in to the ends. The inner walls of the engine compartment were not very strong and wanted to give a little when I loaded the gas pistons while closing the hood so I mad some aluminum brackets to triangulate the stand offs. This did the trick pretty well. On the right side there were a few things I had to clearance to get the piston to lay down. In the picture with the hood frame down you can see how the piston lays in. The upper piston pick up point was cut off the hinge flange and tacked into place on the hood frame. Right now without the weight of the skin the frame wants to pop up so I think they will work well.
I was happy to be able to modify and re use the shock tower stiffening bar. I just had to cut the bottom of it down so that it would sit down deeper in the engine bay. I plated the ends with 3/16" steel and put some weld nuts on the top side so that I could bolt it from the bottom up. Once the fender is on this area won't be accessible to bolt from the top down as was stock.
The radiator overflow tank and the power steering reservoir presented some problems in their stock location. The radiator cap was going to hit the hood so I had to cut away the mounting brackets and fabricate new ones that would let me slide it down and inboard a bit. The fill cap on the power steering reservoir was going to be halfway under the left front fender so I moved it inboard a bit to clear.
The last picture shows how everything there relates to the edge of the hood frame.
