We were driving my friends Honda to Mammoth Mtn for some skiing (about a 6 hour drive) and his hood flew up and knocked the rear view mirror right off the windshield but didnt break it. It was all bent so we just took it off and ditched it on the side of the road. Never made it up: White out for the last 15 miles and the road closed so we ended diverting to Vegas instead...
You may want to take the bathroom scale out and try and position it so it is supporting the hood in the up position with some sort of strut from the location of the strut on the hinge to the scale to determine how much load is on the hinge itself. An 85 lb hood is going to exert way more lbs 6 inches from the fulcrum. Its a 3rd order lever: I measured a 10g plastic knife: lifting one end I got 7.7g (like force to hold up a hood at its lip), but when I weighed it on a fulcrum close to the edge (force to lift 6" from the hinge), I got almost 35g. Fe = Fl dl / de
some structural engineer can help us on this....anyone?