hood won't latch

[kansas-ix]

I did the search already and read those threads.
Mine the cable is not broken as far as i can tell it has been getting hard and harder to open over time have to pull harder and harder, then yesterday pulled like a bastard hood opened but won't close.
Push latch down with hand and won't stick, what is the solution new latch? New cable?
Yes i have lubed the piss out of it.
Let me know how to proceed, man it looks sad with the hood sprung.
latch wont catch to close basically.

[e30jones]

Welcome to my world. Mine did this in the middle of the winter, -40C out, I just got time today to finally investigate the problem. In the meantime, I used a tie-strap to hold the hood down so it doesn't look popped (ghetto, but I only drive less than 10 km's across town each day). It appears that there wasn't enough grease on the latch and over time it has developed rust, causing the arm that the cable attaches to to bind. I'm trying to clean it up, but I think it may come down to a new latch mechanism for the fix.

[kansas-ix]

yeah i wd-40'd mine to get it to work for awhile and the hood cable got harder and harder to get the hood to unlatch. but cable seems unbroken the latch just will not catch.

[Court M3]

cable is probably just stretched out. Same thing happended to my ///M and is happening to the 323i now. Have to get a new one soon to replace it. 20 min job

[jimsill]

i unhooked my cable 3 years ago, now i just get into the engine bay through the emergency catch release with a long regular screw driver. For anyone who doesnt know, you can manually pop the hood latch by going through the driver side grill next to the high beam bucket and pop the latch "key hole" with a screw driver.