Vehicular hood device
AssigneeHonda Giken Kogyo Kabushiki Kaisha
InventorsSakae Sasaki, Kaoru Nagatomi
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A vehicular hood device has a hinge serving also as a coupling link mechanism. The hinge in a usual time allows a hood to make opening and closing movements about a hinge pin connecting a second link to the hood. When an obstacle collided with the vehicle to lift the hood by an actuator, the hinge enables the extended first and second links to determine a hood raise position. The hinge includes a stopper pawl. The stopper pawl has rigidity designed to be deformable by operation of the actuator but not to be bent by a usual hood opening and closing force, thus preventing the hood from floating during normal operation.
Claims28
A vehicular hood device comprising a first link attached swingably to a bracket on a vehicle via a pin, a second link attached swingably to said first link via a coupling pin, and a hood provided at a front part of the vehicle and attached to said second link via a hinge pin, said hood being normally capable of undertaking opening and closing actions about said hinge pin with said first and second links folded, said hood being designed to be lifted, upon collision of the vehicle,with an obstacle, by an action of an actuator, said first and second links being extendible upon the collision to determine a raised position of said hood, characterized in that said vehicular hood device further comprises:
- a stopper pawl for coupling said second link to said bracket with said first and second links folded, wherein said stopper pawl is formed integrally with one of said second link and said bracket, and the other of said second link and said bracket has a portion for being locked with said stopper pawl to keep the first and second links in a folded state, wherein said stopper pawl has a rigidity being set to maintain the coupling between said second link and said bracket during the opening and closing actions of said hood and to cause said stopper pawl to undergo deformation to release the coupling between said second link and said bracket upon operation of said actuator.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.