How do you manually open the hood on a 1993 Plymouth Voyager Van when the release is broken?

Answer 1

We get this from time to time. Usually you can get to the mechanism unless it has a guard over it. Then you have to have patience and luck. Find the cable where it comes out to the grill and try to disconnect the cable jacket from where it is held onto the latch. Then pull the whole cable, inside and out, together as a unit. Don't let the inner core move independently from the outer sheath. The idea is to grab the whole cable and pull on it and the latch should open. You have to disconnect the outer sheath from where it is attached to the latch for this to work. Sometimes you can remove the grill and see where the latch bolts on. Then remove the bolts and the hood and latch will come up as an assembly. Then you can unlatch the hood from the latch once everything is out in the open and visible.

"IN my case the cable actually came out of the latch. So I could pull on that sucker till the cows came home, but it wasn't gong to help. I just removed the front grill plastic. Four little torx head screws and then I unlatched it with a screw driver. Took about 20 minutes."

That answer worked perfectly! Then I cut away the plastic shroud inside the car around the broken lever and removed the lever mounting bracket (three hex head screws) with a socket and ratchet. Then exposed a couple of inches of cable by cutting away the wire reinforced plastic sleeve. Then clamped an inexpensive pair of locking pliers to the bare cable such that it would not only be handy for releasing the latch in the future, but also to serve as a weight to prevent any slack in the cable from causing the other end to jump out of the hood latch again. Also, make sure that the rubber grommet is still properly seated in the firewall hole to keep dangerous fumes from entering the passenger space. It is easily accessed from the inside.