paintballzero

TLDR: Hood wouldn't open, used a screwdriver to pop it open. Posting pictures for other people to reference since I couldn't find any detailed ones.

Over the weekend, I had the unfortunate encounter of pulling the hood latch handle on my Civic and it didn't pop up. I was in panic; if the cable needed to be replaced and the fender would have to be removed, I would need access first to the engine bay. The question here was how to get the hood to unlatch.


I searched around and found a couple of recommendations. From the front of the vehicle, reach the cable and tug on it with some pliers thereby pulling the cable and opening the hood. This seemed useful if your cable snapped somewhere between the interior of the car to the actual latch mechanism. Unfortunately, that wasn't helpful for me since the end of the cable had slipped out and was no longer directly connected to the mechanism.

Then there was a recommendation to jam a screwdriver in to force the hood to pop open. This was confusing to picture since the cable, when actuated, pulls from the passenger side direction (then the cable does a u-turn towards the driver's side fender). To see how everything was setup, I decided to remove as much of the front end as possible to gain better access. After removing the bumper (which was quite tricky to do without having the hood up), I finally had some success!


Here is what I learned from doing all this. With whatever access you have/can gain, you want to first remove the black plastic cover that snaps over the mechanism:



From the opening I circled above, you want to jam a screw in there, letting it rest against the arm that the cable is supposed to be attached to, and push it towards the passenger's side. Here is a better view of what I mean with the whole latch mechanism off the car:



That'll actuate the arm and pop open the hood. I looped the cable end back into the mechanism, sprayed some WD-40 where things pivot, and installed it back. Still not sure why it popped out in the first place. Maybe it's because the plastic piece that holds the cable onto the mechanism (that cone looking end) is broken.


Hopefully someone finds these images useful on how to go about doing the screwdriver method. I had to explore on my own how to exactly do this, but now I'm confident I can easily do it possibly without removing the whole bumper again.

civic402lx

How were you able to remove the bumper?

paintballzero

With the car lifted and secured on jack stands, I was able to remove the two screws that hold the bumper to the fenders (circled "B" in the left image) and the two bolts that hold the bottom of the bumper to the frame (circled "A" in the left image). The trickier ones to remove were the clips that hold the top of the bumper to the frame (circled "▽" in the left image). By reaching underneath the car through the small opening that exists, and by using both a flat and Phillips head screwdriver, I pushed those clips upward towards the sky, against the hood. There was enough space between the bumper and the hood for them to pop out, but I did end up breaking one of them slightly (still worked, though).

Finally, using a Phillips head screwdriver, through the large mouth of the front bumper and reaching upwards, I removed the four screws that held the front grille to the bumper (circled as "▼" in the right image). After some minor jiggling and twisting of the bumper, it popped off. Those two clips that hold the bumper to the grille came off on their own.

civic402lx

Gotch. I had forgotten the ek civic uses clip and not bolt like the eg.. now, that would be a pita.

Freedo_Civegra

Good research! But, I can get to my motor just fine. Lol

civic402lx

You should route that light bar cable better..like under the bar, behind the lower grill insteaf.
have you thought about putting the light bar behind the grill instead?
look a little out if place. Then again, the cut out hood is extremely out of place.

Freedo_Civegra

94 Civic Si

Ha ha, now I know what your avatar pic is. Before I was always like "WTF?".