"William Wixon" wrote in message
...
there have been a couple auto related (repair) posts recently, thought i'd
try mine.
a friend is telling me the handle inside her vehicle that actuates the
(engine compartment) hood-latch-release dangles free and doesn't pop the
hood. i'm thinking i'd like to try to help her. any tips/tricks on how
to open a hood who's latch is broken? i'm hoping there's some kind of
trick besides "a large pry bar" or "plasma cutter", etc.
i haven't looked at it in person yet, thought i'd ask here first so maybe
with your advice i can look like i know what i'm doing when she brings it
over. (i've been courting her for the past 9 months, help!)

b.w.


Step one would be to try to find a similar vehicle and look at a
"working" latch to see what might be wrong.
The last "broken" one I looked at had a spring on the end of the cable.
The cable end passed through the spring and was supposed to compress the
spring against the latch release and trip it. (I suppose the spring was to
make it "self-tensioning" and also to keep you from snapping the cable if
the latch got jammed.)
That spring was missing/broken, so the cable was "slack" but still
attached to the release lever... and the dash lever didn't have enough
travel to take up the excess slack and trip the release.
So, pulling the "loose" cable behind the dash lever with a pliers was
enough to trip the release.