Hood Alignment

SocaleGolf · May 12, 2018

While hand washing the car I noticed the hood alignment was off. As you look at it from the front, the front driver side is closer to the fender then the passenger front side. On the driver side it just short of rubbing against the fender.
When I had the car in for the Climatronic fix, they told me that all the Golfs on the lot were like that. My response was that they shouldn't be. I now have to return and leave the car for day while a third party body shop attempts to realign it. I have never had this occur on any of other cars. Just wondering if this is a manufacturing issue or did I the get the only misaligned hood?

JoulesThief · May 13, 2018

SocaleGolf said:
While hand washing the car I noticed the hood alignment was off. As you look at it from the front, the front driver side is closer to the fender then the passenger front side. On the driver side it just short of rubbing against the fender.
When I had the car in for the Climatronic fix, they told me that all the Golfs on the lot were like that. My response was that they shouldn't be. I now have to return and leave the car for day while a third party body shop attempts to realign it. I have never had this occur on any of other cars. Just wondering if this is a manufacturing issue or did I the get the only misaligned hood?

There is no way that e-Golf came out of the factory like that. No way in hell.... something is amiss... car has been to a body shop for something, is my guess. VW from Germany does not put out slop like that. Is it possible that the left front fender was hit, and repainted?

VW uses a gap jig that measures gaps everywhere on the car and records them, for Quality Control specifications being met, or a fail, and the production line for sheet metal gets adjustments made.

RonDawg · May 14, 2018

30 or so years ago, I was looking to buy a new Toyota 4x4 pickup that was priced on "special" at my local dealership. At the time, these trucks were often being sold above MSRP and the price they were quoting seemed too good to be true. It had about 200 miles on it but that's wasn't enough to price it that low. Test drive revealed nothing unusual.

I came back from the test drive and was about to sign papers on it when the light caught the driver's door just right and I noticed the color was just a *bit* off from the rest of the truck. I looked at it closer and found overspray and poorly masked sections. This was when Toyota actually earned its reputation for quality, and so I knew this wasn't from the factory. This door was damaged and repainted. Of course it was not disclosed to me, and likely would not have. I walked away, waited several months until the year end clearance, and bought a factory fresh, undamaged model from a different dealership.

I'm going with JT and that this car was damaged pre-sale and fixed.

I looked at my own eGolf and the gaps on either side of the hood are consistent. The only quality flaw I could see is where the top of the fender meets the corner of the hood by the windshield; the small section that faces upward has a larger gap than on the sides of the hood. But it's the same size on both corners of the windshield. I would think that was engineered that way, but the gap on my Alltrack (which uses basically the same sheetmetal for the front half of the car) is considerably smaller.

msvphoto · May 15, 2018

I think JT and RonDawg are correct, it probably did not leave the factory that way. I checked our 2015 after reading this thread and the fit lines are spot on, and I am a pretty picky "car guy."

f1geek · May 19, 2018

I noticed a similar issue with my 2017 LE. I adjusted the two rubber stoppers on the driver's side of the hood and it is aligned now. It took me about 5 minutes to fix it.