poping hood without cable?

Some how my hood cable broke at the latch on the hood. Any ways of poping the with out it? Im stumped, I thought about cuting around the latching part from the outside of the hood to get it open, and going from there.

Take out the headlight buckets and take the bolts out that hold the spring part of the latch. its the easyest way. There was a writeup on comanche club about it, ill see if i can find it.

Edit: here you go. http://www.comancheclub.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=872

Unravel some of the cable casing and use a vise grip on the stub of cable.

Lay on the ground and reach up to the hood and slid the latch mechanism rods that run along the front edge of the hood.

Pulling the headlight buckets is the easiest way to go. It takes less than 10 minutes.

There's a really good post on here on how to get in to the hood without using the cable. In short, you unbolt the loop from the body that the hood latches are secured to.

You need to remove the headlight buckets from both sides, there's a horizontal bolt that needs to be removed. There's also a vertical bolt that you access with a long extension on the back of the front header panel.

Take a look at somebody else's XJ for pointers if you can.

And once you get the hood opened, think hood pins.

We use a fork lift at work to open them. I work at a wrecking yard

Thanks guys! Ill see what i can do.

I have a '96 also and my cable refuses to be pulled since about a week ago and I haven't been able to open the hood.

Thanks for starting this Tread.

Think about a external cable loop you can access from the front. Attached to the correct side of the arm linkage, it should work.

Cable hood latches are an anti-theft measure to keep your battery intact, among other things. How you want to mod it is up to you. Just don't eliminate the secondary safety latch.

Hood pins were factory bling in the seventies, I don't see them as being more convenient now or then. The real purpose was for quick access to the engine on a long distance racer by a team of mechanics who could remove the fiberglass replica that had no hinges or springs.

When you just need to check the oil and water every now and then, the factory one hander does ok.