Contour Enthusiasts Group Archives Forums General Troubleshooting Can't seem to open the hood

I have a '96 2.0L with automatic tranny. However, that all seems irrelevant. Recently, I went out to the car and tried to pop the hood...nothing. I heaved on the handle enough that it came away from the mounting bracket on the inside of the footwell. I noticed that the cable and the hose it is in runs through a small white plastic grommet and this in turn fits into a "C" shaped collar that is part of the mounting bracket. This white grommet would pop forward and out of the 'C" collar whenever you pulled hard enough on the handle.
My solution, I just put a couple of screws in front of the white grommet so that it couldn't move forward and therefore not pop out of the "C" collar. So, I thought I'd fixed it because now you could exert tension on the cable. No luck. I still can't pop the hood.

I can yank on that latch handle as hard as I want and you can feel the tension increase near the top of the pull. However, the hood stays locked down. I tried going in from underneath, nope. You just end up underneath the bumper cover. I thought about cutting away the little mesh grill to get at the acutal hood latch but am hesitant.

Any ideas?

Mark.

Pull the hood release hatch, and have a 2nd person try and lift up on the hood. If you get it open, spray some WD-40 on the latch. Shud free it up a lot. Hope this helps.


-Jeff

I had the same trouble, but mine is the 1995 model. That white grommit goes in a slot in the release mechanism. The grommits itself has a tendancy to wear, and the slot in the mechanism can chip. For me, the solution was to grab the end of the cable near the driver's foot with a pair of vice-grips, then use a wood 2X4 scrap against the door rail to provide a leverage point, if it's not broken at the other end it will eventually pop open. Then I replaced the cable, the lever, and cleaned and lubed the latch itself. The service manual says to use a fish tape or similar to pull the new cable, I tried this and in my opinion unless your are Houdini it ain't gonna happen, meaning you may have to find a slightly different route for the replacement cable. Also, it's a good idea to spray WD40 or similar into the latch before the vice-grip process.

Thanks. I had that in mind earlier but was worried that I would kink the cable and it wouldn't have anymore tension. Nice to see it worked for you, I'll give it a try.