I recently was given my father's old 96 accord ex last week and its previous history of 3-4 months ago was that it was stolen. The police recovered it a month later but its condition came back horrible. The thief got away with the airbag (wtf? just the airbag?) and the glove compartment, engine hood, transmission, and brakes are in less than good condition. The insurance only paid for the air bag and everything else was left as is.

Since the car is in the condition it is now, and we can't afford to repair the car, I am just going to drive it slow and hopefully it'll last for 100K km more (it's got 236,xxx km atm). Anyways, the person broke the engine hood and now it won't close properly. It's in the position where a usual car hood would be when the 'open hood' lever is pulled to open the hood. It is being held down by the lever behind the grill, so the engine hood sticks out but won't seat properly.

I was wondering if you guys have any suggestions to why it won't close properly. The engine hood lever under the wheel feels flimsy so I was thinking maybe theres too much slack to the wire it's pulling. Anywhere you guys may suggest where I should go about looking to fix to getting my hood to close properly? Having the engine hood open really makes me nervous since anyone can just open up my hood and do whatever terrorist act they desired. Thanks in advance.

 

It sounds like the theif pulled the hood open or broke the latch in order to gain access to the engine bay, instead of pulling the hood release like any normal person would do. I would suggest getting a new or used hood release and see if that works.

 

you can do 2 things before buying a new hood

above the corner lights are rumber bump stops that can be screwed up or down to adjust the height the hood is latching in at

you can also get a 10mm ratchet and adjust the latch assembly up some so that the hood seats properly

 

would you possibly have a picture of the hood latch? It looks like a piece of metal broke off my latch but i'm not fully sure if there was something that previously existed there or not. And for the latch assembly to be adjusted upwards, wouldn't that raise the hood rather than close it?

edit: would it be ideal to not take this car on highway? Would i have the possible chance of the hood hook breaking and the hood flying up and blocking my view? The hood hook looks quite worn upon visual inspection.


Modified by taKuto at 5:14 AM 3/27/2005