Front Tilt Hood

The truck came with Ford's stock hood hinges. This meant, like most '56 F100s, that the hood would barely open enough to work on the engine and, when closed, the hood did not fit well to the body. In my case, the rear of the hood on the passenger side would sit high by 1/2" or more. One could work to try to get the hood to fit flush, but it would not stay there, or would cant the hood. Apparently this is a design issue and cannot be fixed by getting new OEM hinges. The "best" fix is to change to a front tilt hood. So I did.
The hood came off as part of the general front end disassembly. The original hinges were removed (and replaced with stainless steel covers from the tilt kit).
Flipped upside down, the original braces are removed and the brackets from the tilt kit are installed.
The original braces are spot welded to the front of the hood and bolted to the rear. The instructions with the kit talk about removing the bolts then "wiggling" the front to break the welds. This can bend the mounting location on the hood. Instead, I used a 4" hand grinder to work through the welds and the bracket pulled off with minimal damage to the hood. The new brackets bolt to the front and are a bit wider than OEM brackets - so make sure you've got the assembly centered up front.
The rear of the hood has on rollers that run on tracks - shown in the upper portion of this picture. The shape of the track keeps the hood horizontal as it latches/unlatches during closing/opening.
Here's the hood just before latching - note the horizontal alignment.
When open the hood sits almost vertical allowing full access to the engine compartment. A bracket holds the hood in place and keeps it from resting on its nose and the front grill. This bracket needs some kind of retention key - even though it is spring loaded, it has a tendency to walk out of the bracket attached to the hood. I'm using zip ties for now, but need to come up with something.

One roller can be seen attached to the hood where the hinge used to attach. Again, this runs on the track seen in the lower part of the picture.
A view from the front of the front tilt kit. There's still some '56 Ford fitment issues I'm working on, but the fit of the hood to the body is much improved.