Hood Won't Open

hey folks

this past week my gf got a flat in our prius and the bmw dealership she works at changed her front driver's side tire. when she got home, i went out to check out the new tire and figured might as well check on the oil since she's been consuming quite a bit of oil over the past year...lo and behold i couldn't get the hood to open! i tried the trick to press on the hood while my gf tried to pop it open, nothing! i have a few inches of slack from the cord and based on the sounds coming from under the hood, it seems like the cord came off the latch mechanism.

i hate dealership workmanship in general as i didn't have a great time with my local toyota dealer for my FRS that we got from new, and this event made me hate it even more, so i dont want her to take it back to them (i just changed the oil a few weeks ago and the hood was working days before the flat when i checked the oil) so i'm trying to fix this on our own. hopefully i can get some tips from yall!

i see that the cord runs behind the fender liner in the driver's side front wheel well but it didn't appear there was any sort of damage. i watched a YT video for a 2nd gen prius where some dude was able to pop the hood open by prodding the mechanism with a stick from the grill. it seems like the latch design changed for the 3rd gen as i can see that i'm able to access the 2nd hood latch from the grill but the latch that actually pops the hood open from the inside of the car doesn't seem accessible from there. i've gone through a few threads with someone successfully popping the hood from the cowl/windshield area but that is a bit more work than i want to partake in with 120 degree AZ heat.

ty in advance!

 

well for anyone's benefit in the future....in regards to a 3rd gen Prius, by far the easiest way to pop the hood with a broken cable, is to jack up the car, remove the underbody panel that sits right below the radiator/oil pan, then reach behind the radiator with a small pry bar or flat head...you'll be able to see the spring mechanism that may or not be connected to the cable depending on your broken cable situation. by pressing against the metal hinge in the same direction the cable would be normally pulling it should successfully pop it. took me a good 2 hours or so with much of that trying to figure out what options we had...either way, certainly a lot better than the diag + parts fee of over $100 a toyota dealer was quoting my gf's bmw dealer..

mine turned out to have a split cable near the latch mechanism..cable is still attached just does not properly pull on the mechanism. now to decide if i should bother replacing the line entirely or find a bubba approved fix because looking at how the end of the cable is designed, it seems like this type of failure would be very common since it is made of plastic. prolonged az heat does not seem to be very kind to brittle non-metallic materials..

if there's anyone that had success with bubba fixes for the cable, please chime in