Emergency Hood Release?

[Eric]

PROBLEM SOLVED —See Last Post.

Looks like my hood release cable is broken, naturally discovered after replacing a caliper and needing to bleed the brakes .

Lever moves freely, springs back easily, no resistance.
Removed kick panel, cable seems intact on the inside end.
Looked up from bottom in front of radiator, can see the cross-cable, but not either latch.

Search here revealed no suggestions.
Search on 'net showed stuff for 5-series, 7-series, and E46, but nothing for E36 - suggestions included drilling holes at specific points, rather involved stuff.

On my old 911, if a cable broke, the latch would pull too far in the release direction, which would cause it to unlock as well, thus preventing lockouts. It doesn't look like BMW took any advice from Porsche.

Anyone have any specific solutions to this problem, or do I have to just start cutting through stuff?

- Eric

[spidertri]

No personal experience with this, but here are a few links that may help.

http://forums.bimmerforums.com/forum...t=hood+release

http://forums.bimmerforums.com/forum...t=hood+release

http://forums.bimmerforums.com/forum...t=hood+release

Hope they help!

[Eric]

Thanks for those links - very informative!

I've done more searching, including Pelican and BavAuto, and still found nothing concrete, though.

Two questions for the group:
- Does anyone have a photo of the BACK side of a front signal light, showing the tab that latches it into position? One suggestion was to get into the engine compartment by using a butter knife to depress the tab from the front, through the space between the headlight and the signal light, but I've had no luck with that so far. I've popped out the signals before, so I know roughly where the tab is, but I might be able to hit it better if I had a photo.
- Does anybody have a photo of the inside of a driver's side hood latch? The things are inside of little boxes, and you can't see where the parts of the mechanism are. If I had a photo, I might be able to drill a hole in the right spot and operate it with a screwdriver.

Thanks...

- Eric

[cooljess76]

Not the most informative thread, but the only way I could see removing the cable is to remove the driver's front fender. I haven't actually done this myself, but I did remove the fender on my M3 and would've removed the cable if it wasn't pinched in the chassis from an accident.http://www.318ti.org/forum/showthread.php?p=300264

[Eric]

Thanks, Jess - I'd already seen those, but every bit helps anyway.
Probably I'll just start messing with it and taking stuff off until I get it.
Problem is I'm working 12 hours a day every day until Saturday, and I've got to drive an hour each way with a spongy brake pedal until I find a way to get brake fluid into her.
Grrrrrrrrr.

- Eric

[cooljess76]

Eric, it just dawned on me that you can't access the fender bolts without popping the hood first sorry man, wish I could offer more help. I would think that if you removed the kidney grilles, you may have better access to the latch and spring catches.

[spidertri]

A lot of people mentioned taking the underpanel off and operating the latch with a long screwdriver. I'm guessing it is hard to find the latch from so far away?

The corner light tab is about halfway up the light and has two teeth that hold it to the headlight. DDM has a corner light install guide which you might find helpful. Hopefully this link works (it is to a pdf document)

http://www.ddmtuning.com/support/ind...nloaditemid=23

[cooljess76]

Ok, I went and took some pictures of mine since the front of my car is removed. My spring catches are rusty and will need to be replaced, but hopefully these pics will help you understand how the system works. The driver's side spring catch has an extra bowden cable that goes to the passenger side. So the cable goes from the release handle, to the driver's spring catch, to the passenger's spring catch. The hood latch is a separate part altogether, so once the spring catches release the hood, the latch is released by hand. It looks like you should be able to access the cable once the driver's side corner light is removed. As mentioned before, you could remove it with a butter knife. Just slip the butter knife between the headlight and the corner light and it should slide right out. Here's a few pics:

[cooljess76]

Here's a few pics of the corner light with the headlight removed. Don't forget about the plastic pin that engages into the fender:

[spidertri]

Hah, I also took a few pics, and made a sweet diagram in paint.

Top pic is the slit that some people talk about turning with a screw driver to pop the latch loose. Bottom pic shows the plastic box and where the hole is to get the screw driver up there. With the underpanel out of the way it is pretty open and accessible.

[Eric]

Spider, that underpanel is long gone - I think I remember running over it on the highway about five years ago.

As for what you can see, the problem is that you can't actually see or get to the bottoms of the latch pins to get to the screwdriver grooves - they are located roughly directly above the bumper mounts, and there is a "wall" between the wide center opening where the radiator sits and the places where the latches sit, just outboard from there.

The DDM guide is great - it shows exactly what the interlocking tabs on the signal and the headlight look like and where they are. I was in between them, but I think the butter knife I was using wasn't quite thick enough to get them apart.

Jess, thanks for the pics! I can see the locking tab of the signal clearly, but the money shot is number 5 of the latch - I can see how the wire attaches, and where I might need to go in to get it if the wire is broken inside of the latch itself. I could get in where the transfer cable to the passenger side attaches and push the latch toward the driver's side with a screwdriver if I could get to it, and I can follow the transfer cable, because I can see it from underneath.

I'll let you know how this goes, but it may not be for a few days because of work (if things are slow, I can screw around in the parking lot a bit, but otherwise, no go until my days off).

Thanks again!

- Eric

[cooljess76]

Eric, pic#5 is the driver's side spring catch, but the cable detent that you see is actually going to the passenger spring catch. You can't really see the cable going into the driver's side spring catch, but I would imagine it hooks up the same way. I have the spring catches and latch mechanism off of my M3 that I plan on using to replace the rusty ones on my ti with. I'll try to get some better pictures for you.

[Eric]

I know, Jess. The opening on the bottom is under the passenger side. That's okay, because it means that I can push that lever over toward the driver's side and it will operate both latches, even if the cable from the cockpit is broken (if the cockpit cable is broken, I can't just reach in and grab the cable sheath and tug - all it will do is pull the sheath and the broken cable out of their hole).
I just have to get under it, possibly by drilling or a hole saw, to get to that lever.

- Eric

ps: notice how easy it is to tell what part does what in your picture, and how hard it is to tell in these pictures, even though they're essentially the same picture:

[Eric]

The solution to the broken cable problem is fairly simple, and is as follows (BUT, skip ahead to the next post to see why it may be completely unnecessary to do this!):

Remove your Left grille panel.
You do this by pounding firmly against the black grille bars with the soft part of your fist. They are held into the inside of the chromed plastic ring by little plastic snaps, and you have to give it a good shot in a few places to pop them out.
Once the grille panel is out of the ring, you can maneuver it out through the hole, and then pull off the chrome ring.

Once they're gone, you can look inside.
It will look like this:



You need to cut out the plastic in roughly the area I outlined.
I used a Dremel battery powered Moto-Tool with a 1" metal cutting fiber blade - it zipped right through.

Once the plastic is off, you have access to the latch.
My car is missing its under-bumper air dam panel, so I was able to slip in under the spoiler and look straight up. You could remove your air dam panel, or you could do this through the grille opening, depending on your dexterity.

If your hood were open, the place where you're aiming is directly under the yellow box in this picture:



If you had the latch out of the car, and looked at the bottom rear of it, it would look like this:



With the latch installed in the car (but with the hood open, so it's easier to see), you can see your target here:



and here, again, in a closer view:



So you get a large screwdriver, wedge it into the indicated space, between the body of the latch and the lever, and twist the screwdriver to push the lever toward the driver's side of the car, and the hood will pop.
You will probably need a few tries to get it right.

And that's it. Don't close your hood again until you've fixed it .

- Eric

[Eric]

The next question is "What went wrong?"

In my case, I pulled the release lever, felt some resistance, then suddenly no resistance.
The release lever still sprung back into place when let go.

I ASSumed that my cable had broken.

I was wrong.

The cable was fine. It is made of stainless steel, and is very strong and flexible.
I had lubricated the latches in the past, and they were not difficult to move, like some are.

My problem was that the mild steel cable sheath had rusted and collapsed.





The hood release cable runs straight to the front of the car, where it is subjected to a constant barrage of rock salt in the winter. It is a sick joke that BMW made the cable out of stainless, but not the sheath, and then failed to provide an emergency release.

In my case, if I had removed the release lever, which only allows a limited amount of pull, and just pulled long and hard on the cable core itself, the hood would have opened.

Because of this, I would strongly recommend removing the hood release lever on the driver's side kick panel under the dashboard and pulling LONG and HARD on the cable with a pair of Vise Grips BEFORE you go cutting up your car - I could have saved myself a lot of trouble that way.

All you have to do is to remove the pivot screw of the lever (phillips head), pull the lever straight off the pivot, remove the two hex screws that hold the lever assembly onto the kick panel, remove the assembly, and rotate it to allow the cable end to slide out, just like a bicycle (or motorcycle) brake cable.
Then clamp a pair of Vise Grips on that cable end and start pullin'!

(You do not have to remove the kick panel to do this, like I did).







Note the weatherstripping pulled straight backwards away from the kick panel, in the above photo.

- Eric