Are differences in my hood gaps normal

Thanks Storm Rider. I will be taking it to the dealer to have it "clay bared" because after I washed it I could still feel grainy particles all over the hood & roof & under bright light in the garage I saw hundreds of pin point orange dots on the white paint and I took it by the dealer on the Saturday that the detail guy was off. my salesman saw them & researched it & said it was a fallout from the train cars during shipping. when he drove it from the California dealership here to nevada, his dealership cleaned it but didn't notice those dots. I think they should have run their hands over the surface to check for clean paint but I think they dislodged some of these onto the cloth they cleaned it with, as I have some swirl marks on the hood. Hopefully they will get these sandy things off my paint.
Bert

 

here is an update. the owner of my dodge dealership took a look at the car along with my salesman and their shop foreman and they spotted MORE things than I did. the owner asked my salesman to go with me to the outside body shop where they have all of their work done & this place is just about the finest place to take a car as they have a superb reputation. It looks like there was front end damage that was either done at the factory or most likely the California dealership they got it from. it must have been damaged en route from the factory or else while at the Calif. dealership and none of this was disclosed. they can see where the front fender/nosepiece was repainted and the fender, nose and hood were not lined up properly afterwards. I also told them that the left front plastic wheel well splash shield was outside of the wheel well at the forward bottom and side and I had to put it back in behind the fender lip which was difficult. all of this on the same side. the dealer & body shop will have the car for at least a week because it also needs to be "claybared" to remove what they call " RAILROAD CAR FALLOUT". I am going to insist on a complete inspection of the suspension & frame as well as mechanical inspections of anything that could have also been damaged. I am not sure exactly of what the damage was but this may explain why the calif. dealership tried to stall my dealership from picking up the car for an entire week. I also have both front tires that look like when pointed straight that the drivers side wheel almost looks like it points more to the left & when I turn the wheel straight, the right wheel looks like it points a little more to the right. This COULD be just an optical illusion but I am NOT taking any chances as that will be checked on the alignement equipment. One thing I do know is that my new Challenger will now have a "carfax" report on it listing some kind of front end damage which will affect the value and you better believe I want some kind of compensation to satisfy me.
Bert

 

That is awful about your ride, but at least your dealership is doing you right. Good luck on the reimbursement part. Hope things go your way.

 

Storm rider, here is the latest, the dealership told me to make a list so I went around the car in the garage last night and found the following.

the hood gaps are misaligned

the black plastic part above the radiator area you see when you open the hood is connected to the inside fender on the drivers side only and is at least 1 inch away from the fender on the right side ( where the fender/hood gap is widest.)

the nose on the fender side ( driver side) is not flush like the rest of it

grabbing the center nose section it felexes up & down & this may be normal I don't know but anything at this point is suspicious.

the plastic eye piece sections around the headlights rattle

moving to the rear I just noticed since I usually back in but drove straight into the garage & the sun was shining on the tail light area I noticed that the black surround tail light panel is away from the body about 1/8 of an inch or so where it curves around at mid point to the bottom, the rest of the panel is tight against the body as it should be.

my trunk looks straight however my 2 taillights have different sized gaps where they meet the center light bar.
the wide hood gap, the black plastic part under the hood & the taillight panel section that is away from the body by at least 1/8 inch AND the wide taillight gap are ALL on the passenger side of the vehicle.
the paint touch up on nose & fender is on the left drivers side.
I don't think I am making too big a deal over this as I paid a LOT of money for this car & I expect a new car not to have defects like this that require it to be taken to a body shop to fix. it seems the more I look the more I find. other than that the car runs great. but if the workers were that sloppy on the assembly line ( if this stuff happened ON the line)
it makes me wonder where the final inspectors were. who knows some inexperienced new worker may have worked on my car and didn't have the experience to notice flaws. It seems that my dealership never PDI d the car because they thought the calif. dealership did & the calif. dealership didn't do it either thinking my Nevada dealership would do it. well it goes in Tuesday to be detailed & clay barred then they will send it to the outside body shop to address the panel issues. I just want to be IN the loop as to what exactly is going on with my Brand new Challenger R/T Plus.
I guess I had to vent.

 

Venting keeps you from exploding. I am sure they will make it right for you.

 

Sadly a lot of the body panels don't line up real well. Yours sounds exceptionally bad. I had to realign the rear lights, adjust the hood, and adjust the right front fender panel as the black plastic inner liner was outside the sheet metal at the rear of the wheel well. I've still got a misalignment between the driver front fender and the left front quarter piece.

The clay bar on the car is a good thing, there is usually residual rail dust on the car from shipping. I generally clay mine twice a year to get crap out of the paint.

 

R/T, that sounds like my car even the wheel well liner but on the L-side in front of the wheel, I got it back behind the sheet metal. As I was looking at one thing & comparing that to the opposite side is when I started noticing the other things. I hope they get my hood gaps corrected as uneven gaps on a hood bug the crap out of me & that is the first thing I will always see walking up to the car. the black window door/window frame plastic/rubber piece sits back further than the r- side and that needs to be positioned to match the r-side and many other challengers I have seen have both the same & hood alignment gaps are perfectly even, mine is the first one with misalignment until I just heard about yours, how did you fix it and how does it look now ? what causes these problems ? lazy workers & final inspectors that look the other way if they look at all ? the rail dust all over the car angers me as they know this problem is there why isn't the covering plastic they supposedly ship the cars with not working & preventing this. I expect a new car to be just that NEW with smooth paint without a lot of swirls and feeling like someone added some sand to the paint. How bad was your paint ? the car will be there a week and I will be checking in & going by to see exactly what they are doing & to make sure they don't forget anything. don't give it back to me with any of the problems not overlooked. the dealer will then clay bar it & check the front end alignment.


Bert

 

I had the hood and cowling off when I moved the Magnuson coolant tank. When I put the hood back on I adjusted it. There are adjustments on each of the hinges and you can also get some adjustment on the mounting bolt mounts. Not hard but takes patience. Having someone sit in the car just to pull the hood release is a bonus

Cause? Who knows, quality control asleep at the wheel, machine out of alignment, could be anything. Most people probably don't pay as much attention to their car as we do.

 

It is still at the body shop having corrections done, I hope they get everything right the first time.

 

Update, Friday I went to the body shop to check the progress and saw they had the entire front nose/bumper off. I could see all the inner frame, fender panels, everything & all is good, the body man checked for any hidden damage & there was none. I thought maybe the left fender may have been damaged and been taken off to be fixed because of the uneven hood gaps, the side of the nose where it meets the fender near the right fender light has a small ridge where it wasn't flush with the fender but, all of the factory spot welds are intact and none of the bolts have been touched as my body guy who also looked at it with me said that no matter how good a body man is, they cannot re install bolts without leaving evidence that they put a wrench to the bolts. the factory paint was still covering the bolts and spot welds. Now once the misaligned hood & rear tail light panel are fixed, it will go back to the dealer for a clay bar detail & front end alignment. I cannot wait to get my car back, it has been almost a week since I dropped it off.
Bert