I just received my new cable in the mail to replace my old broken one, and I'm baffled by how hard it is to push/pull the cable. This might be a shot in the dark, but has anyone else replaced their hood release cable? Was it very hard to manually move the lever? It seems like it's so stiff that if I install the new release, I'll just break off the handle again.

 

The leaver must be bent.

Mine sticks, and I can simply move it with my hands. Try some liquid silicone or WD-40. Work it back and forth and see where the latch is dragging.

 

The trick to not breaking the handle is to put two fingers on each side and pull from the TOP where the cable goes into the handle.

I replaced mine once, Definitely a PITA. I myself and my friend pulled on the cable to get the broken one out. The cable runs up out of the cabin through the fender up and under or over the headlight, I cant remember. I put the new one over the headlight. Some say to remove the front bumper but i never did.

 

This is also a great time to relocate your cable through the firewall into the engine bay.

Very easy, and it's a good theft deterrent. Just search, there is a write-up.

 

Crap, I just realized it's because the new cable is defective. When you bolt the bracket in, the handle faces 90* to the side! The idiot at the assembly plant forced the handle/rod into the bracket assembly the wrong way.

This is just great. Now that I removed my bumper, fender, tore apart my interior and removed the broken cable, I find out that I don't have a replacement .

 

Bummer.....

On a good note, your Avatar is hilarious..... I love that commercial..

 

ive been thinking about doing that might do it tomorrow as long as most of the ice melts outside lol

 

My hood latch has always been stiff. I actually have a brand new latch and cable here ready to go in soon.

The latch doesn't always allow me to shut the hood all the way too. I'll shut it and it will catch on the safety latch, but the hood will sit up half an inch or an inch and not latch all the way down. The latch doesn't pull the cable back into resting position when you release the cable. It's like the springs in the latch are switched.

 

Is it an OE cable?

 

OEM, straight from Majestic.

Turns out, if you pull the handle back ALL the way (and even stretch it a bit further than it's supposed to go), you can rotate the rod in the plastic housing. So I was able to turn it 90* back to where it's supposed to be. Now it slides waaaaaaaay too easy. I think all the pushing/pulling I did when it wasn't oriented correctly has gouged the plastic and worn it out. So now the handle wobbles around a bit and it's extremely loose and I'm ****ing pissed off that I got this defective piece of ****, but I had to install it anyway because I'm not about to have my fender and bumper off again just to install another bracket.

So yeah. Just for the record, with the cable/bracket assembly un-installed and in my hand, it took my full strength to push/pull the handle. And mind you I've been a serious weightlifter for 6 years. It probably took 50+ lbs of pull strength to retract the handle. Now that it's oriented correctly, the handle just slides back and forth with zero resistance. So it's not like it was "kind of tight," it was so freaking tight that it felt like the handle was glued into the bracket. I almost thought I was going to break off the new handle again just trying to retract it.

But whatever, my car is a hoopty anyway. A loose/wobbly handle is better than no handle at all. Before now, I had to grip the broken off handle/rod with pliers just to pop the hood.

 

Just for future readers of this thread; make sure your cable looks like this:



And not this:



I didn't even notice the ****ing problem until I went to install it and noticed the handle was facing the wrong way