Can't open the hood, cable is broken.
 

Dear all:

I drive a 92 protege. I tried to open my hood today using the lever located underneath the steering wheel. But when I pulled the lever, the whole lever with the cable came out, that means the other side of the cable which controls the clamp switch of the hood is loose.

Now, I can't open the hood anymore. Has anyone had this problem before? Any solution for it?

One thing I can think of trying to do is to take out the front piece which located between the 2 highlights. The piece that has the "MAZDA" sign on it. (I hope you understand which front piece I am talking about.) Once it comes out, I can see through the clamp switch and hopefully I can get the hood open and fix the cable too. But how can I take out that front piece though? I definitely don't want to break it. Anyone knows how to take out that particular front piece?

Any response will be greatly appreciated.

Thank you.

Well, that is indeed a problem. At the moment I can't think of any great solution for this. However, I know how to take the front grille you're talking about out. The hood must be open to take it out, so your plan won't work. There's one screw and four clips that must be removed to remove the front grille. The only thing I can think of is if you could maybe get something (screwdriver) through the holes in the grille and manually push the lever (that the cable normally moves). Good luck!

take off grille, unbolt lock contraption. or if the cables still conected to teh contraption, just pull it off to the right by hand.

WAIT, THIS HAPPENED TO ME...
 

This same issue happened to me a month ago. I had three of my friends pouring over the offending hood latch up front trying to figure out how to fix it, and it took my wise father to realize that only the cable needed to be replaced. You need to purchase a new hood latch cable that goes from the latch behind the grill along the driver side of the engine bay through the firewall and connects to the handle that sticks out of the dash in front of the driver's left knee. The new cable should include a new handle that's already attached to it.

Basically, my father and I removed the hood latch behind the grill and partially disassembled it to unhook the cable, which is easy once you get the mechanism removed. Next, we loosened the handle in interior from its location and cut it off of the wire with some heavy-duty snips. Then we connected the end of the new cable that attaches to the hood latch mechanism to the end of the old cable we just cut. We twisted the wires together and bound it tightly with electrical tape. We did this so that we could pull the old cable out through the front and drag the new cable into place along with it. Aside from being a tight fit through the firewall, everything went fine and we attached the new cable to the partially disassemble hood latch, put everything back together and shut the hood.

Hopefully this helps. I think my cable broke just because I pushed and pulled on the handle too hard which eventually separated the wire from the cable.

But how did you remove the grille and hood latch mechanism without being able to open the hood?

Opening hood again...
 

Well, we opened the hood by getting the hood latch to release from the interior. We used pliers and whatnot grab the wire within cable and pull it back, thus releasing the hood. It was a trial and error kind of thing, and for weeks, if not months, at a time my hood was frozen shut. I was forced to get it fixed, however, when an oil change came up. I never had to remove the grill, but that's only because my hood was never truly frozen shut. I could get it open, but it would take at least a half an hour of fooling with the handle in the interior and pushing and pulling the wire within the cable. If you can get it open, though, and the cable is the source of your problem, it's a fairly easy fix.

u might be able to get some pliers through the grill and pull the cable.

Re: Opening hood again...
 

Hi, everyone:

First of all, thank you for all your responses, I really appreciated them.

I've tried many things over the weekend, but still can't get the hood open at this point.

I have a question specifically for ProtegeJohn, you said when the same situation happened to you, you could get your hood open by "pushing and pulling the wire within the cable". I am not exactly sure what you meant by that. Not sure you had the same situation as I am having right now, because when I pulled the handle, the cable and the handle come right out together, it's got no tension whatsoever anymore. Therefore, doesn't matter if I pushed in or pulled out the handle, it is not going to do anything for the hood latch on the other end.

ProtegeJohn, can you explain more about how you got your hood open from interior? What do you mean by "wire within the cable"? Thank you.

I guess the only way is to use a screwdriver to mass around the holes through the grill, and hopefully able to unlock the hood latch, well at least that's what I have been trying in these few days, but still no luck. The holes on the grill are really small, not big enough to get any plier in. Ultimately, I may have to yank out the grill, but I really don't want to do that.

Guys, if anyone has any better idea, please shine some lights in there.

Thank you.

Hmmm...
 

You're right. I did have the advantage of getting my hood open after much trying. It sounds like the wire that's enclosed within the cable has severed completely in your case. That's bad news. For what we had to do, I can't imagine that even getting the grill off will help very much. I guess then you can take the hood latch mechanism out. If you do that, we used a screwdriver to push and pry some cogs that eventually popped the hood. Of course, if you get the hood latch mechanism out, then nothing is holding the hood down.

I don't know, you're just going to have to get creative to get the hood open.

Good Luck

Re: Can't open the hood, cable is broken.
 

You have 2 choices, remove the front grill (breaking it)
or get to the lock from under the car by removing the radiator and everything... I think you should try to remove the grill carefully first... anyway you will find a grill in any junk yard...
good luck