So I did the gutter guard grill inserts on my truck today. I've been searching the last couple of days to see what people did with their hood latch. I don't know if this has done before, I'm sure it has but I didn't find it anywhere so I thought I'd share. What I ended up doing for the hood latch was drilling a 1/4" hole in the lever that you push to open the hood. Then I took a piece of 1/4-20 threaded rod and figured out where to put a bend in it so that I could put it in the hole that I drilled and it would run behind the bar for the grill. Then I took 2 nuts some locktite and tightened it. I did have to get a pliers out and do a little bit of bending on the latch to get it so I could pull the threaded rod over smoothly. So now when I pop my hood it opens a bit I put my fingers under the grill and pull that threaded rod to the right and it opens the latch. The third photo you can see where the threaded rod comes down past the bottom of the grill. It's a little noticeable but unless your looking I don't think anyone will see it.

 

Good thinking. If I were you, I'd probably take it off and paint it flat black. Then it would be pretty much invisible. Still looks good now, though.

 

Like it! Good ingenuity, gloss black would look sharp

 

nice i'll probably do something similar to my kota...forget about paying 90 plus haha.... if you havent already you should spray it down keep the rust away for a while

 

Im definatley gonna have to paint that rod black tomorrow, and I was going to paint the inserts with some clear but didnt have any so I'm hoping that they wont rust.