Need Help: Hood won't open...

When I was putting a BB on my GF's 98 XJ I opened the hood to undo the shocks, got done, closed the hood. Went to open it up today, I pulled the hood lever inside the cab and the hood wouln't pop open, the lever didnt pull itself back in either it just stayed out. Has anyone else had this happen? How can I fix it? Is there a way I can pop the hood from the outside? Any help would be great, don't wanna take it to the dealership, $$$.

do you have skinny arms?
Lay under the front bumper with a flash light. I think you can use a long extension of some kind to reach up between the elec fan and the air filter box to push the linkage to the side...IIRC..I've done it before but it was a long time ago...or, two person task, while the hood release is pulled, push down on both sides of the hood at the same time..

Never done it, but I've also heard that if you remove the driver's side headlight, and the grille, you can reach the hood release latch.

HTH!

done the skinny arm trick on my 87 xj... reach up and grab the metal linkage and push it to the left you should hear each side pop free... or try pushing the release in and push down on the hood the go and try to pull the hood release... if it doesnt open and the hood release is pulled out then go try pushing on the hood... its a bunch of playing around and getting to know how your XJ likes to be touched.

if you remove the headlights, you can unbolt the catches on each side.

Sonds like the cable may have snaped. Do you have tention on the hood release handle when you try on pop it or is it just loose back and forth?

Once you do get it open check the latched on both side for propper alignment and spary some PB blaster of something on them. My handle has not retraced itself for years. I just push it back in when I pop the hood.

I had this problem when I first got my '97 (from New Hampshire) XJ. Once I got it open, I just used spray lube on all the little spots that needed it and haven't had a problem since. Voila! This is the most complicated dern hood latch system I've ever seen, it's ridiculous!

I usually give the hood a real good hit right in the middle and it usually pops up after that.

Other times if it doesn't pop up as soon as a pull the lever, I can give my driver's door a good slam and that will pop it up.

j99xj said:

I usually give the hood a real good hit right in the middle and it usually pops up after that.

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Heh.

That was the way I popped the hood on my old 1980 Malibu Classic! I'd pull the cable, walk around to the front, and give it a good thump; then it'd pop up and I could open it as normal...

Man I miss that car.

Okay, now I'm in the same boat. When I pulled the release it came out, but there was no pop. It didn't feel like a cable broke or anything. I'm thinking some thing came apart further down the line. I was just going to take the kick panel apart and look around. Has anyone had this problem or is it always a broken cable. I just really don't want to take the headlights and everything apart.

Tough crowd...so has anyone had a cable that stretched so the pull handle didn't work but didn't snap? If it did snap did you distinctly feel it when you pulled it?

Jess said:

if you remove the headlights, you can unbolt the catches on each side.

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Yup, worked for me on my '97. Pain in the ass to get under the hood, but it works.

Mark

Hood pins. Functional and adds the flair of a hot rod.

XJPhoenix said:

Heh.

That was the way I popped the hood on my old 1980 Malibu Classic! I'd pull the cable, walk around to the front, and give it a good thump; then it'd pop up and I could open it as normal...

Man I miss that car.

Click to expand...

Was your car previously owned by the Fonz?

rworks said:

Hood pins. Functional and adds the flair of a hot rod.

Click to expand...

Care to explain? Pics? How'd ya do it?

The hood release cable on my father's '01 broke 3 times. The first 2, the handle came off in my hand and I was able to cut into the cable and pop the hood by pulling on the inner cable with a pair of pliers. (It doesn't sound like this would work for you)

The 3rd time was a different story. I tried the skinny arm trick but was only able to pop one side of the hood...

I took the headlights off, but wasn't able to get to the latch bolts, unless I was looking at the wrong ones. My sockets were too long and there wasn't enough room to get box wrench in there...

In the end, my father took it to a local shop and had them deal with it.

My handle broke off on my '88 the other day...went and got some hood pins from autozone for 8 bucks and i'm going to install them today hopefully....shouldnt be too hard to install, and much cheaper and less of a hassle than replacing the stock stupid latch system

Evidently I joined the ranks of "the damn hood won't open"... Then the battery died.:smsoap: Then we have record cold temps and I can't move the Jeep from the cold garage to the heated garage (hard to charge the battery when the hood won't open, dead battery, won't start.. you get the idea).

So I had a couple of weeks of driving the wife's Explorer, affectionately known as the dumpster, to think about how I was going to open that hood, without taking the headlights out. Unless you have a trained orangutan you're not getting your arm up from underneath to pop the latch free.


So I made this out of about two and a half feet of 1" by 1/4" steel:


I drilled a 1/4" hole in the end and cut it into a slot. The lower hole didn't work, ignore it.



It need a bit of a tweek:


Then I slid under the Jeep with a flashlight, found the rod that goes between the latches and slipped the tool over it. While the wife pushed down on the hood I twisted the tool a bit to make it grab and slid the rod to the side and POP, the hood came open!

The moral is; don't forget to snap the cable into this bracket when you put the hood back on:



Oh, and that tool now lives under the back seat, just in case.