When I bought the Jeep, it had some crinkled fenders from a front right and a back left collision. I wasn't looking for pretty, so that was no big deal. However, the front right crunch pushed the bottom of the front clip back a bit on the right, causing a few minor consequences that I've had to work around or accommodate. The main irritant was that the right interior spring hood latch would not fully release because it didn't quite align with the catch on the underside of the hood. In essence, the spring latch was angle slightly forward because of the impact on the front right fender. It would then push against the catch mechanism on the underside of the hood, turning a one person job into a two-person job. After pulling the hood release myself, I'd have a family member pull on the hood release by the driver's left knee as second time to pop it as I pulled it up from the forward lip. Not fun. Other times, when alone, I'd cram a large screwdriver or allen wrench into the gap between the hood and the grill to put tension on the latch and to force the hood up. Then I'd pull the release handle from inside the cab to pop it. Again, not fun.
My initial fix was to remove the right spring-loaded latch release itself so that only the left latch held the hood in place. [The left spring hood latch is shown in the lower half of the image at right: it's the black spring topped by a cone .] Since I wasn't driving this thing much yet, it was fine. But after a few short highway trips and the drive to El Mirage and back, I noticed a slight up and down vibration of the front right corner of the hood. I wasn't particularly worried that the hood would release and be folded back into the windshield by the force of the wind, but why take chances? Since I couldn't repair the front fender to get the spring latch to be in alignment, I would have to find an alternative to latching the hood securely.
I decided to go with a pair of black YJ/TJ/Wrangler-style hood catches that are synonymous with the smaller softop Jeeps. I ordered a set from Rugged Ridge. Unfortunately, the fitment wasn't right. The wood grain trim on my Jeep's front fenders were in the way, and I was not in the mood to cut them only to find out later that these hood catches still wouldn't work. 
So I sent them back and bought a pair of black CJ-3/5 T-style hood latches from Quadratec. Happily, I was able to get these to work and look good in the process. Here's how I did it with my son, who rocks the tools.After placing them in various spots along the front and sides of the hood, I settled on the section of the hood that raises up a little over an inch towards the center of the front grill. With the best helper in the world, I mocked up the placement of the latches and marked the holes with a pencil.
Then I removed the grill (six bolts on top, three screws on bottom), drilling holes in the metal frame of the grill. I bolted in the latches with the supplied hardware. I then put the grill back on so that I could line up the hooks that the T-latches grab to hold the hood down. What I wanted to avoid was drilling into the hood itself until I had great confidence this would work. Once the latches were on the grill and the grill on the Jeep, I felt it was going to happen. After drilling, I used some longer black screws with blue Loctite and a pair of lock washers to hold the catch in place. Here's the final product. I'm quite pleased with how the project turned out. I know there are some FSJ people out there who will think it's blasphemy to put "little Jeep" parts on a full-size Jeep, but so it goes.
