hood latch

[silverfbimmer]

My hood latch mysteriously stopped working the other day so the darn hood won't close. The latch is contacting the lock, but it just isn't hooking. The lock mechanism seems to be functioning properly. ( I pulled it off the car and it needed to be lubed up at bit but that is it.)
My first thought was that maybe the hood shifted on its mounting points and wasn't linning up just right to have the latch contact the locking part. And ideas would be appreciated. Thanks in advance.

John

[silverfbimmer]

No ideas or anything?

[TheBlackKnight]

I have the same problem right now, kinda weird as it worked fine untill it sat in my garage for 3 weeks....

[thumper3ld]

Anyone find a fix for this. It just happened to me and Im supposed to be driving back from boston to ny and its raining all the whole way. Dont really want to drive in the rain with my hood like this.

[browntown]

friend of mines civic was doing that, a whole bunch of pb blaster and pulling the hood release cable a few times to pull in the lubricant made it finally work.

never happened on an e30 though, so I cant tell ya, good luck.

[Spaz]

generally the cable is binding somewhere holding the latch in the "open" posisiton so it won't close, but its really hard to give advice when i can't see or touch the car myself....just look for oddities at the latch

-cam

[thumper3ld]

generally the cable is binding somewhere holding the latch in the "open" posisiton so it won't close, but its really hard to give advice when i can't see or touch the car myself....just look for oddities at the latch

-cam

I dont believe the cable is binding anywhere. I was able to locate it in the engine bay and I can pull in both directions. I'll check again 1st thing in the morning when I have better light. Hopefully it wont be a monsoon tomorrow.

[Kilomph]

Ever figure this out? Mine stopped working today...


[edit] Good ol' WD40 :)

[RedHoodRidah]

This happened to me a while back and it turned out to be the spring that cocks back the hook. I lost that shit and I almost cried, I had my hood tied down with a twirled up coat hanger. So just get a flashlight, look in the latch and see if the spring is still there, if it is then I don't know what to say.