What are the wires attached to the hood for, as seen here?
The hood is held down by pins instead of a traditional latch. The wires keep you from losing the pins when you pull them out to open the hood.
And the dual pins are to keep the hood from flying off because the standard center one is insufficient.
I knew it! I’ve long wondered about this, and couldn’t think of any other reason.
Thanks.
Since I never thought about the wires being for keeping you from losing the pins, this is obviously incorrect.
Thanks anyway. 
This is a mistaken assumption. It can be proven by the fact that they made base model Dodge Challengers, Mustangs, Chevelles, etc. that did not have hood pins. Beginning in the Fifties, autos had auxiliary hood latches in case the main one came loose. That’s why, today, you have to get out and push a latch after you’ve released the primary one from inside the car. Adding a big muscle car motor didn’t make the cars so fast that the hood would fly off. If it were to happen at all, at high speeds, the hood would buckle in the center between the fenders, venting excess pressure. If you continued, it may become an airfoil and rip off, but you’d have plenty of warning.
These are a styling feature meant to emulate race cars. There is a saying among car tuners that 100 pounds = 10 horsepower. Stock-bodied drag racers and NASCAR stock cars were lightened as much as possible in order to make them faster. Removing the hood latch, auxiliary latch and the two hinges saved 20-30 pounds. Less robust hinges were used at the rear of the hood and two or three pins were used up front. I don’t recall seeing hood pins as often on sports cars, I think they generally used Dzus fasteners to latch down the hood at all four corners. Same principle though, less weight.
For stock cars, the hood pins had an additional benefit. Up until the mid Sixties, stock cars were essentially that. There often is a lot of body contact in that line of racing, and the central hood latch would sometimes get bent up or knocked out of place. The hood either flew up in your face or refused to open during pit stops. There was more adding of fluids and general tuning than you see today.
I don’t know whether to take Fiddle Peghead seriously or not because that statement seems both rude and ignorant. The wires are to keep one from losing the pins. The sanctioning bodies frowned on sending a car out without a fully secured hood. In the hectic environment of a pit stop, it is very easy to misplace a hood pin. They could be a bit of a problem on street cars because they’d rub the paint off the body unless big loops were created. In turn, those big loops would whip around on the highway, making noise, rubbing paint and generally be distracting. Before the end of the muscle car era, several cars went to push and turn hood latches, like you see on this 1971 Mustang
I truly admire, yet again, the knowledge of the Straight Dope. But don’t take me seriously. My response to dan1500 was just a joke. I had an idea about why the wires were necessary, and Ethilrist confirmed it. That’s all. If I knew I was going to get a dissertation on the history of wires coming out of hoods and why they are needed, I would have asked for it. But since I didn’t, and as unexpected as yours was, I thank you!
And on some cars, they do nothing at all. You can get fake ones that just have adhesive on the back and then you tie off the cable on the bottom of the hood somewhere.
Aren’t these sorts of pins sometimes fitted with locks and used for security purposes (that is, making it harder for thieves to access the engine compartment and the fancy parts within?)
Because nothing screams security like a loop of 1/16" stranded wire?
Cutting the wire won’t release the hood, you still have to remove the pin. The wire is there so you don’t lose the pin when you take it out (and because it looks cooler that way). If you were to put a lock on the other end of the pin, you’d still have to cut that (the lock or the pin).
But, from what I’ve seen, looking hood pins are completely different looking and don’t involve the wire. Also, while digging up that picture, I see you can get fake locking hood pin kits as well that stick on with adhesive.
That’s a great picture for showing the paint damage that the wires can cause. Either that or the guy didn’t wash his car before taking a super close-up picture.
Those Aerocatches are sensational. Clean airflow, no wire problems and an optional keylock. The downside is that they cost $60 vs $5 for traditional hood pins. They’ve never risen high enough on my “buy now” list for me to have tried them out.
Glad to see that Fiddle Peghead was just joking. The Dope has an expert on virtually everything but unfortunately my specialty is “hood pins” instead of “making a Ponzi scheme work”.
You’ve never seen a muscle car come off the line and twist the body enough to lift one front wheel off the ground and not the other.
I believe that’s metallic flakes/glitter in the paint to make the car shiny. The cables are plastic coated.
I have both seen and done it, but not often enough to see a hood come open. I can understand how there would be a definite possibility of it happening.
Damn musclecars and their unibody designs! This wouldn’t happen to a Ford Thunderbolt!
The plastic coating doesn’t help much, but you’re probably correct about the glittery paint. I wasn’t really sure what those spots were from. I think it looks like crap, but maybe it’s just bad lighting. I’m not a fan of glittery flip-flop paint jobs in general.
There use to be a guy down the street with a Buick GS who could pull the front end off the ground with what looked like very skinny slicks in the back but the worst case of the “twists” was a Vega with a 327. the windshield never had a chance.
I myself had a regular hood come open. It was unlatched and the secondary latch failed. Luckily I had a shaker hood so there was a hole to look through as I shut it down.
Really? That seems a hellava lot of weight for some hinges and latches.
Here is an example of that. In my younger days I had a 66 Pontiac Lemans with a 455 in it, the 2 times I took that car to the drag strip I ended up replacing the windshield because of doing the same thing as the car in the picture. The second time also resulted in car spending some time in a body shop getting the frame straightened too.
Which is how JC Whitney has stayed in biz, year after year…