Hello all (yet again). Been moving along getting stuff fixed on this Dakota but just took a huge step backwards. Went to check on a source of this grumbling sound and the hood won't pop. The lever inside has no tension whatsoever and realized the cable is detached from the hood latch. Still have the grille on and there isn't (or doesn't seem to be) a way to get the grille off since there are screws under the hood. So, I found one thread on another forum of someone who had a 91 I think and had the same problem. It seems they exhausted a lot of methods and couldn't get it to pop and had to take it to a body shop where they somehow removed bumper and grille and had to air chisel off the bolts to the latch. I am hoping there is some other way to get the latch to pop other than this. We can sorta get a flathead in the slot on the hood pin but can't get it to turn to release tension on the coil. Are gonna try some other tools tomorrow.

Any insights? Tips? Thanks.

 

The cable generally just pulls on a lever, that releases the latch. Getting to it with the hood closed is the fun part. Might be able to reach up from under, and feel around....

 

This video shows how it works at the beginning. You'll have to find a way to get under and look up with some light and trigger the latch. Hopefully here is some cable still attached that you can grab. There are more videos on yt

 

Different latch than normal hood latches. It seems certain Saturn's, BMW's and older S10's share the same horrible design.

We used this as our tool and hit with a ball peen hammer.

Follow the rivet back behind (front of hood) and push the lever to the right to unlatch hood.


So after brainstorming again we came up with this solution. My dad used a telescoping mirror and was able to get look at the mechanism through the grille. If you find the big rivet behind where the hood pin is, you can follow the latch to around the front of where the hood pin is and use a tool like the one shown and hit the end with a ball peen and it will be enough force to unlatch the hood and make it pop up. Hope this helps someone else because there is really no good info on the net that we could find. It's not a normal latch design and these seem to be found on BMWs, older S10s and some Saturn's.