Hello everyone. All of a sudden my hood won't lock in place. Maybe someone else has had this issue? The issue appears to be with the upper apparatus/spring on the hood, and not the lower apparatus on the car, as the lower apparatus works properly when greased good. I removed any grease from the spring in case it was causing it to slip rather than catch, but that didn't resolve anything. Could it be that the spring is so old and rusty that it won't compress enough when attempting to close then hood? Thanks for any ideas!

 

Look and see if the catch on the grill isn't locking closed. If the release cable is starting to stick, it will hold the catch open. It may be as simple as reaching down and pulling it back. If the hood stays shut then, the cable is dragging.

 

Thanks so much for your reply. I have had an issue with the catch on the grill being stuck open at times through the years, in which case I push it back out with a screwdriver and grease it good, and I'm good for a few years. So the issue this time seems to be that the device in the picture won't catch onto the catch. The catch IS positioned to catch.

What does the catch actually catch? Is it the spring, or the center piece that the spring surrounds? Thank you!

 

he coiled spring on a rod is what pops the hood up when you release it and it holds against the safety catch until you release that. There will be a thing like a bar near it. That's what goes into the main latch. When it presses down on the latch, the latch grabs it. When you pull the cable, it releases the bar and the spring pops it up. If the bar is broken of, that may be your issue.

 

Thanks for the explanation! I totally understand the concept as you explained it, and certainly the latch isn't grabbing what it's supposed to grab. But I really don't think there ever was a "bar" that was grabbed. I suppose I could be mistaken. If there is supposed to be a "bar" there, I wish I knew what it looked like and what it was attached to. Is it not possible that the main latch is supposed to grab the black centerpiece within the spring when the spring is compressed? I think it's more likely that it is supposed to work that way on this van. I'm starting to think that the black centerpiece is too worn to be grabbed. Or that the spring won't compress enough on the side the latch grabs to allow the black centerpiece to be grabbed. Possibly so?

 

I took a picture of the lock rod on y pickup. It's different than your but identical in function.. Yours may be a similar bar bolted to the radiator support.

 

Thanks so much for doing that for me. Mine doesn't work that way. I'm going to take a picture of my "near radiator" mechanism. I really should have had that posted all along. Be back in a bit. Happy Thanksgiving!

 

This is the catch by the grill. So the spring is supposed to depress and the center rod in the spring is supposed to be caught by the crescent-shaped hood release lever at the top of this hole. So I'm thinking that I need to somehow repair the spring mechanism on the hood to make the center rod get caught again, or replace the entire hood mechanism. Don't know exactly why it won't get caught anymore, but I'm thinking years of wear. Any thoughts on this? Thank you!

 

I haven't seen that type of latch in years. I'd make sure the mechanism is working easily. It looks like it's rusty. The cab;e may be stuck in a pulled position or the latch isn't going back like it's supposed to.

 

Getting stuck in the pulled position used to be a frequent issue with the latch, so I realize that this is typically where the fault is. Keeping it well-greased on a regular basis resolved that. What appears to be rust in the pic is actually grease. The latch is in the "unpulled" position in the pic, which is where it needs to be in order to catch the hood mechanism. But it no longer catches it.

I think this time the fault lies in the spring mechanism on the hood. I was thinking maybe I could do some repair to it rather than replace it. So far I've removed all the grease from the spring mechanism in case it got too slippery to be caught by the latch. Didn't help, though.