Hatch will not open
 

Just bought a 98 318ti. The seller was away at college, and his mother said you had to push down on it while unlocking it. No joy. you can hear the mechanism click, but would not open. We even had him on a call, and he said it should just open after pushing down and unlocking. he said he had adjusted a lever to make it work better.
The price was right, and they deducted $200 from the price. Now it's home and I need to get this fixed. Any suggestions short of taking my torch to it?

Push the button and nothing happens? Verified that it was, in fact, unlocked?
You can actually remove the plastic panel from the inside without opening the hatch. I had the same thing happen a couple months back- the plastic clip (item #19 highlighted in red) that holds the linkage arm in place cracked in half

http://i66.tinypic.com/2hzmski.png

You can either replace it or creatively slap a couple zipties together to get you by for a few years more:

http://i68.tinypic.com/ilg4u0.jpg

(I did actually just leave the plastic cover off, assuming that the zipties will need to be replaced at some point.)

Thanks, wound up being a broken plastic clip jamming it.

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