Just a quick note on this one. We have an old Saturn with 155,000+ miles on it. Things are at the stage where lots of stuff is starting to break (exhaust, front brakes, starter) and need repairs, but it still is good basic transportation to keep around as a second car and gets better mileage than our Subaru Outback.
With all the recent repairs I’ve been doing, the fact that I’ve been using a coat hanger stub poking out of the grille to open the hood (after the release cable broke a couple of winters ago) started to get old. Looking around the web there was little info on how to actually do the repair but the parts were fairly cheap – I was able to get a “used” and “minor cosmetic issue” unit from Amazon’s Warehouse deals for under $16. So I decided to give it a go. (BTW, the cable ended up being brand new in original packaging when it arrived, yay!)
Should you be looking to do the same, I figured out an easy way to get the fix done.
Our cable had snapped (and the handle came off) from the end inside the car. The cable is routed from inside the kick panel next to the driver’s side, up behind a bunch of insulation/sound deadening stuff, through the firewall (passing through an integrated grommet) and into the engine compartment. From that point below the cowl area it travels along side the battery connection/fuse box frontwards and through a hole in the radiator support and turns toward the center hood release. There are two routing clips along that route through the engine compartment, one near the fuse box and one just through the radiator support.
It seems there was a factory technical service bulletin at one point due to the fairly common seizing and breaking of the hood release. Water was getting inside the cable sheath and freezing in cold weather or causing corrosion which ultimately jammed the cable. Cables were replaced while still under warranty and they changed the routing of the cable to pass over (instead of through) the radiator support to eliminate the dip in the cable which was trapping the water.
Looking at this situation, I was not looking forward to having to manually route this cable so I was looking for some way to get it done more easily. I ended up figuring out a really simple solution and had the cable done in less than 10 minutes once I started. Here’s what I did:
Inside the car, remove the trim alongside the driver seat/rocker panel area – lift the plastic at the seam/split and snap it off (4 clips, 3 on the rocker panel and one under the dash). This reveals the hood release lever mount and the cable end. While our lever was already broken off, you can take off the lever here and remove the cable end.
Under the hood, remove the cable end from the hood release lever (I also removed the grille assembly via the 3 small bolts to give me more working room as I was removing my prior coat hanger hack as well). Pull the ferrule towards the front of the car (firmly) to remove it from the bracket and then down to provide slack in the cable. Wiggle the cable end out of the release lever so the cable can come fully free. Trace the cable and release it from the two guide clips mentioned above.
Now that the cable is free of all but the firewall pass-through, go back to the driver’s footwell. There I used a plumber’s pipe cutter tool to cut the cable sheath several inches from the cable end and pulled the sheath off so that I had several inches of bare cable available (you may need to cut off the cable end ball). I then used a pair of vise grips to clamp on the sheath and pull about a foot of the cable assembly back into the footwell. This dragged along the integrated grommet on the cable, which I slipped off after removing the vise grips. Now there was a full length of smooth cable sheath I could pull back through the firewall to the engine compartment side.
Inside the car, I took the new cable assembly and attached the lever to the end of it. After wrapping several turns of the old cable around the front/latch end of the new cable (being careful not to kink the new cable), I wrapped a couple of turns of duct tape around it (staying clear of the new cable as much as possible in order to not gum it up). I was able to then go out to the engine compartment and simply pull the free end of the old cable and it dragged along the new cable, pulling it through the firewall (including seating the grommet) and along the existing routing to the radiator support. Once there I did the equivalent of the factory TSB and routed the cable over the radiator support and back down to the hood release to prevent the cable dip.
However, before installing the cable at that end, I lifted it to face vertically and squirted a whole bunch of white lithium grease in the cable end to lubricate it and inhibit moisture. I then proceeded to install the cable into the hood release as it was before, being sure to snap the ferrule in properly and tight. Snapped the cable back into the guide clips and installed the release lever onto the cable in the footwell. Slid the release lever assembly into the mounting bracket in the footwell and tested the release to be sure the hood opened (which it did smoothly/easily!) and then reinstalled the fascia panel from the kick panel and along the rocker panel.
Now that I knew the hood could be opened normally, I then reinstalled the grille assembly and made sure to align it with the hood (required some wiggling before tightening the bolts). Done – now we don’t have to explain to service personnel how to open the hood anymore!