I did a silly thing i didnt open my hood all the way and while starting the engine it crept down till shut. It must of been on its last straw.

the lever, ive tried to push and pull and the hood wont go up.

i can see when looking in a the lever the 2 bottom bolts.

and i see a groove made by to plates one on each side and a pin slips between.

i also see a spring on the right side.

ive tried prying a big screwdriver in the groove to see if it would widen .. no luck yet.

the spring im sure goes one way or the other, but man did they make them tough or what .. im still searching for the right tool to get a grip, pull, or push
not sure which way to go.

ive thought about the two bottom bolts. but they look tough and theres two more up higher that dont look any friendlier.

any one ever get a challenge like this.

-Kurt

 

I've had the latch mis aligned such that you can't open the hood.. not fun.

you might be able to tighten the bottom two bolts enough to hold the latch still.

in my case the hood pin was wedged against the stationary side of the latch, so I had to MOVE the latch body to get it to release.

I had to remove the grill to get to the upper bolts

Sam

 

my latch just moves back and forth.

I think im going to give my open end wrench a shot at this. ans see if i can get those bolts out.

-Kurt

 

Wow! I don't really have any advice as I'm not familiar with the hinge on that year. I can empathize with you, though. A buddy of mine brought over his Dakota last weekend because the latch had come undone. (He isn't really sure the hood was all the way down.) So we had to straighten the hinges. He was lucky that was the only damage. While fitting the hood, we accidentally allowed it to latch before we had everything adjusted right. Oops! Luckily, I was able to make a hook to slip between the hood and the grille to pull on the latch and free it, but just barely. Nope, not fun at all! Good luck!

Dave

 

at least on my 55, removing the bolts would not have helped, as the latch handle goes down thru the hole in the valance.. so for me, I had to tighten the bolts to hold the latch still so that the release handle could move the clasp..

Sam

 

I know you have a different truck, but I had the exact same nightmare happen to me a few days ago. I had poked around on the front rubbber bumper on my hood and it disentegrated in my hand because it was dry rotted. Then, in the time between that and installing the new one, I closed my hood and it went too far down and the hood pin went too far up into the latch and got caught. I had to take a skinny piece of tubular steel and make a hook to free it up. I sympathize. I learned a good lesson about those rubber stops. So you might want to make sure yours aren't worn out or missing.

 

I had this happen on my 55 it took quite a while to get it open I had someone pushed down on the hood while I used a large screwdrive vedged between the dowl pin and hood area, the dowl pin until it popped open. It tookk almost an hour of trail & error befor I got it opened.

 

With the hood so dang heavy i dont know how anyone can put the hood down without the lock engaging.

I found a fix on my 59 on the left side there seems to be a plate probably for tamper resistants. but on the right side on the very top of the latch mechanism there is a piece that over hangs a bit. This may be my problem because why would they have a taper resistant on the left but not the right
but i was able to push this up with my finger not much resistance. and it would open up.

After giving every thing a good look over and finding nothing wrong except a piece was welded together. It didn look factory. I closed it crossing my fingers and than tryied to reopen using my finger again and all went well.

it would be nice if i can find a exploded view of this to see how mind compares.