How do you open a hood?

[Mudderoy]

I mean you need to be a safe cracker to get in to the ****ing Jeep Cherokee engine bay! Well at least from the top!

Anyway I knew from the start that I would find a way in but I wanted to start a thread since I didn't remember seeing it covered here already.

I did a search just before leaving work to see how other people had done it.

One person said that if you don't have the skid plate in the front it was fairly easy to reach up from under the Jeep and unlatch the lock.

I got under the Jeep and you can actually see the metal bracket that the cable runs to.

With my lift the length of my arm was a little short to reach the lock. I had to build a little thing to lay on that raised me up about 8 to 10 inches, then if I stretched I could get my hand around the rod that runs across the front of the hood. I still couldn't move it to unlatch the hood though.

Finally I just grabbed the cable and pulled it free from the bracket. Desperate, tired, sweaty and very dirty I just pulled on it in the same direction you'd pull from inside the cab, and CLICK the hood opened.

After opening the hood I tried to figure out what happened. It wasn't a broken cable everything was hooked up as normal.

Finally I figured it out. The cable that I removed from the bracket must have already been out of the bracket. It the outside covering of the cable is not locked into that bracket the handle inside will pull out a good 2 to 3 inches and just appear to be disconnected when what it's doing is moving the outter cover of the cable instead of the cable.

Boy what a pain in the ass! I am seriously considering removing all that crap and installing hood pins. This whole thing started this morning when I wanted to pop the hood and do a final check for fuel leaks after changing the number one injector last night.

I seriously considered not driving the 98 to work simply because it would be a very bad situation to have an engine fire and NO way to get to the fire because I couldn't open the hood!

Something to consider and this is not an issue on the TJ, why? Hood latches!





So you see here where the outside covering of the braided cable is in this bracket? If I remove it from the bracket the handle inside the cab does the exact same thing it was doing this morning, just lose.