well i am going underneath now. taking pics and all. trying to figure out a way to "get to it"

the hood releaser INSIDE of car(beside emrg. brake) is useless i believe. pulling on it w pliers does nothing. it doesn't come out any further when pulled, and it doesn't "spring" back like it used to.

has the cable detached somewhere? possibly.

so now i am trying to look at how to take off the honeycomb front grill. appears that it was broken before. so aside from the 2 vertical running bars(about 6") on each side (which are attached at the bottom portion of the grill and runs upward to somewhere), there is one screw on the outside some past mechanic screwed in a LONG time ago and now its really rusted.

hoping that taking it off would make more room to get to the main latch.

will be back when there is more progress..... hopefully i am as lucky as the other guys..

FINALLY!

after 4 hrs of fighting it popped open!!

grill was impossible to take off. can't reach the mechanism from behind the rad. can't remove the manual latch.

so tried old fashioned coat hanger technique. that took an hour and a half.... i am frozen.. both hands r scratched up. broke 2 nails. (really) all that, with a view of the engine and all other unknown parts of my bonnieville. :P

i am cleaning it up. found some anti-seize grease used for airplanes? anyways. also i am stealing my roommate'* guitar string off her guitar... hee hee.. she'* not gonna like it when she gets home, but i can replace it afterwards. no biggie.

thanks to everyone for their input and stories... really helped me out ALOT!!


THANKS ALOT!!!

Good to hear you had success. So where did you put the coat hanger?

I will try to illustrate this..

1. because of the honeycomb grill is broken/split on the driver side, I have a narrow but horizontally long gap which was helpful to slide in and adjust a bent wire coat hanger from the driver side towards center of car.

2. with a flash light, i could see the plate that which the latch or mechanism is mounted on. (at first i didn't see it because of all the other manual latch and its components in front of it) do note, you can only see the metal plate as looking through the grill.

3. on metal plate(about 5"-6" long)
there are these circles/hooks looking thing on the 2 ends
high mid point - another circle

4. wire hook was inserted in between the mid circle and end hook on driver side and pulling towards driver side. also to aim slight lower than middle point. need lots of patient and re-adjustments!

hope this isn't too much detail!

thanks Adam!

the cable came off of the latch, but i can probably weld it back on some day. right now the guitar string works like wonder!

thanks for your advice!