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Thanks for all the help everybody. I finally fixed the hood release on my '95 9000 Aero. Reading thru old posts on the subject really helped. Unfortunately there was not one post that described the whole workings of the mechanism in detail. It is actually quite simple how it works, but when you can't get your hood open to look at it it might as well be rocket science. So in order to provide info for people with this problem in the future, I am posting a fairly detailed explination on how it works.
Starting with the lever inside the car, a steel cable inside a sheath goes thru the firewall on the drivers side. This cable evidently has a tendancy to break, although that is not what happened to me. If it does break - do not pull out the sheath, simply thread a new cable thru it. This cable runs to the front of the car then across the front, just under the hood running from the drivers side to the passenger side. It passes thru two metal "loops" located just to the inside of each headlight. The loops are about 1/3 inch diameter. You can see them from the underside of the car looking up. Attached to the cable are two metal balls about 1cm diameter. Someone called them "BBs" in another post. These BBs attach to the cable just to the right of each loop. They are tightened to the cable with hex screws. From what people tell me, this is another very common failure of the hood release (again, not what happened to me). The BBs become loose, so when the release lever is pulled, the loops aren't forced to the left because the BBs are sliding on the cable. This is probably the easiest to fix. Simply get 2 wire coat hangers and from underneath put a coat hanger through each loop. Then just pull both hangers to the left at the same time - the hood should pop. You can then re-tighten the BBs.
If these two senarios aren't your problem, then it gets a little more complicated. The way the top side of the whole gizmo works - the part you can't see from underneath the car, goes like this. Attached to the hood itself are two bullet looking things, maybe about an inch or so long and 3/4 inch wide. These bullets are fixed to the underside of the hood by adjustible screws, and they have springs on the outside of them. With your hood up you can see two holes on top of the grill area. When the hood closes the bullets go into those two holes. The bullets have a groove on the side of them and when they pass thru the holes, the "loop" catches the groove on the bullets and locks it down. So here is the play by play. When the lever is pulled, the cable gets pulled from right to left. The BBs attached to the cable then push the loops to the left, which then releases the loops from the groove on the bullets. Then the springs around the bullets push the hood up and you have to just release the last middle latch by hand. There is one more component to this whole contraption. There are two rubber stoppers in the front corners of the engine compartment. These are there to prevent the hood from closing too much and the bullets going too far into the holes. Thus we finally get to the problem I had. The rubber stopper on the passenger side had become compressed, thus allowing the bullet on that side to plunge too deeply into that hole. The top of the bullet actually went all the way thru the hole (not supposed to) and got caught on the bottom side of the hole, making it impossible for the hood to release on that side. Here is the solution: first take off the grill. this is done by undoing the two torque screws attaching the grill to the car. They are located about 2 inches deep between the hood and grill. You really have to force the hood up a little bit to find them. At least on my car it is really tight. They are located about 6 inches from the edges of the grill. Once the grill is off, get a pair of pliers and keep turning the bullet from right to left. Eventually it will unscrew from the top of the hood and then the hood will release. Once the hood is open it is very easy to put everything back together. Make sure you turn the rubber stopper a couple of turns clockwise to make sure you don't have a repeat performance.
I know this is a bit wordy, but my hope is that the detail will help someone in the future when they do a search on hood release. I wish I could attach pictures, but I don't know how.
Thanks again, Tim
posted by 24.49.97...
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