Expert: William Forster - 3/31/2007

Question
William,
I have a 97' Honda Accord, 4 door, dx. The trunk and spoiler was damaged( beyound repair) at a self serve car wash. I bought a salvage trunk and spoiler.I have no idea the proper sequence to remove/replace the existing hinges and wire springs.What is the final alignment procedure? THANKS..

Answer
The hinges are either bolted to the rear body in the trunk jamb, or inside of the trunk. When installing hinges, or a deck lid, start allignment by positioning the bolts over the spots where they were before. Cars are painted after the bodies are assembled, so it's easy to set parts approximately back where they were before. Just put the bolt exactly over the bare paint spot where the body bolt was. Now, you will probably still need to do some tweaking, especially with a used lid, but it will be close. Its not that difficult that you can't figure it out, visually. Allignment is just trial and error, there is no given "procedure" that magically alligns lids. Bill