hood latch

[kage]

I have my car sitting for a couple of months to make some money for school and insurance. I started her up today and wanted to pop the hood . I pull the lever and the hood does not open. I can reach my hand up under the bumper, which i thought i could manually pop it open, all i could feel was the secondary latch. I have a feeling the primary is seazed. Is there any way to get the hood open without taking off the front bumper? any help much appreciated.

89 240 hatch

[PhaneSoul]

try pop'ing it again, on my 89 hatch i pull the lever and it doesnt pop, i have to go around front and pull on the corners, i think i needa replace the spring or sumn.. sumtimes it opens on first try, sumtimes it doesnt...

[EnzoRWD]

same here. the whole mechanism is real dirty, so im gonna clean and lube it. ill let ppl know what happens....

[bcar240]

mine used to do this too. the lock would pop, but the hood was jammed or something and wouldn't raise up, I had to take my fingers or a dowel rod and pry the hood up, and it would eventually just open up like usual so you could get under it to the safty latch. try having someone pop the hood while you are prying it up. strangely, after I had a front end collison and had that fixed it opens just fine. so I guess if all else fails, go ram someone.

[PhaneSoul]

or not..

[Arrow]

I had the same same problem with mine! I think at the time it might have been due to cold weather partally... But what I would do is when it didn't pop up I would reach under the bumper and push up the hood, then release the sec. latch... Once I took a good degreaser (I used Simple Green) to clean the mechanism and put a little WD-40 on it after wards it worked perfectly! I also didn't completely clean off the entire thing I just got off the majority of the 'gunck'

[tonynalli]

just get some brake parts cleaner and blast the entire mechanism for about 15 seconds. and then when that is done get some penetrating oil and put some on the cable and on anything that moves. mine works great.

bcar240 it was so funny mine did the same things but someone hit me on the fender. i dont know what it was but it works perfectly now. but if yours doesnt work DONT hit something...lol

[S14Life]

That problem happened to me and was due to the rubber pad things on each side. There wasn't enough pressure on the hood to pop it up, so you may want to look into that. I did the brake cleaner/WD-40 thing and it worked fine.. like twice. So check your rubber pads. The ones that were on my car were non adjustable so I got two of the ones that screw on and off so I could adjust them properly.

[EnzoRWD]

wd40 did it for me, i cleaned it yesterday. hint: on s13's, put a plastic bag on the lip underneath the latch, so the lube doesnt mess up ur paint-Enzo

[kage]

thanks for all of the help. I fixed it by pulling the release and holding it while my brother pulled it up. I sprayed it with carb cleaner and sprayed all of the junk off with the hose then sprayed it completely with lithium grease. It works perfectly now, going to do similar thing to my squeaky clutch pedal, drives me crazy.