Hood Stuck Shut How to Diagnose Stuck Hood Latch on Your Car Truck

Hey, friends. It's Len here from 1A Auto. Today we wanted to go over some common issues that you might have with a hood latch. Let's talk about it.

Now, there's basically two issues that you're probably gonna have. Either your hood won't close and stay closed or for some reason, it just won't open. So, we need to get a little bit of gauging on what we need to diagnose. The first thing that you would probably try looking for is the hood latch itself. That's gonna be located in the front of your vehicle, generally behind your grille. On the Chevy right here, it's very simple to see, so it's nice. If your hood's stuck shut, obviously you're gonna have a little bit more of an issue. Well, let's go ahead and lift this up. The reason why the hood latch will be the first place that I would wanna look for the issue would be because it's exposed to the elements overall. They leave this open so air can get in past and go through the radiator and everything to cool your engine, but it also lets a lot of dirt, debris, road salt or whatever, if you have winter or anything like that, or even moisture right past it and it sits right in here. Of course, this is made out of metal. What does metal do when it's covered in dirt, debris, water, salt? It's gonna get rusted and rotted, and more than likely, it's just not gonna function properly.

So, now I have an old latch right here for demonstration purposes because it's much easier to see. If you were to grab onto this lever right here and move it, you're gonna see this big, large hook right here move. This is actually just like a safety latch. It's like a secondary safety latch, we'll say. If you were to turn this around, you would see the rest of the mechanism back here. Let's assume that this screwdriver right here is the piton on your hood that's supposed to come down and latch. That's gonna come brushing by the secondary latching system, and then it's gonna come right here. As you continue to press down, it'll latch this in. Now, the hood is latched in. Let's say you go ahead and you pull on that handle and it's gonna pull the cable and it's gonna pull on this lever right here. That releases it. The hood is gonna pop up to the secondary release, then you would pull on that and release your hood.

As you can tell, not all latches are the same. This one doesn't have a safety release handle like the rest of them. If you were to look, you would see a cable and then follow that cable. It's gonna lead us all the way down here, and then we have the little release here. Of course, if you have something like this set up, there's a lot more that could go wrong. You could have an issue with this handle, you could have an issue with the cable freezing up or even it could just be binding down at the pivot point.

Now, something to keep in mind is that not all vehicles have only one hood latch, some vehicles will have multiple. If you happen to notice, one side of your hood releases when you pull on that handle, but the other side doesn't. More than likely it's because maybe you're driving a European car, and those tend to have more than one release. They'll have one over on the passenger side, one over on the driver side, and then they'll just have like a secondary release in the center, which is like this.

There is some things that you could think of when it comes to maintaining or maintenancing your latch. If you were to take a look at the backside of it, and it looks as though things are getting rusted rotted and they might just not function right in the near future, it's probably a great idea to try to clean it up. You can use some parts cleaner, you can use a little brush, maybe try to get off some of this crud. Also, it might be a good idea to use some penetrating spray or even some sort of lubricant after you've cleaned it all down. Just go ahead and clean it down. And then of course, maybe work everything a little bit to make sure it functions as it should.

So, as far as latching issues are concerned, like I said, it could either be because the backside of the latch there is rusted or rotted and it's just not functioning the way that it should. It also could be because maybe your adjustment is off. There is some bolts that are gonna be holding your latch to the crossmember of your vehicle. A lot of times, the latch itself will have a bigger hole than the actual bolt. So, you should be able to move the latch around to align it with where it needs to be. If for some reason the alignment is off, maybe the latch just can't unlatch because even though I pulled this out of the way, or even though that this is released like it should, it could still be holding on partially. Something to pay attention to if your hood latch doesn't wanna release the hood is your stoppers right here. These should be adjusted. So, they're putting light pressure of your hood in the upward position, and that'll also hold the hood from jiggling around. If these are broken or not adjusted properly, it could potentially cause an issue.

Now, if your hood is completely frozen in the closed position, something that you could try to do, if you have a nice, clear view like we do right here of the latch, you could try to come under and see if you can pull on this. This is the area where the cable is gonna come through the bracket area and then it'll grab onto this. And when you pull on that handle inside the vehicle, it should pull right here. If you were to look at the backside and I was doing the same thing, you can see that this should be able to pivot. A lot of times, what happens is it gets rusted and rotted behind here, and these pieces can't flow like they're supposed to move. This needs to be able to move. If it's rusted and frozen, it's not gonna be able to. One of the best things that I would do in this instance, because obviously if the hood's stuck shut, you're not gonna be able to necessarily see behind there, is I would just take some penetrant any way I could and just spray, spray, spray the entire area as much as possible in hopes that it'll make its way down into this area right there, and eventually free things up for you. Once, of course, you could get the hood open, you could move along to trying to clean it up, re-spray it, and then coat it with something to make sure that no moisture could get on there.

So, now on our vehicle, I have a clear view through the grille right here. And I can see when I lift up and down on the hood, the latch is definitely retaining the hood in the down position. So, what I would like to do is take a nice plastic trim tool and I'm using plastic so I don't damage my paint. And I would just stick it in here and try to apply a little bit of pressure. I'm gonna take a nice, long screwdriver, and I'm gonna try to make my way in through here and see if I can move this latch. There it is. That released for me. Now, I'm gonna grab this handle, this is for the secondary part of the latch and it comes right up. At this point, you can take a look right behind here and just see if it looks like it's rusted or rotted or anything like that. If it's very bad, I would just go ahead and replace it. And you can get one of those right at 1aauto.com.

Now, if you don't have an open grille like what we have here, you could try to get underneath the vehicle and see if there's a way that you can access that lever. Sometimes you can reach your hand up, other times you might need to use a screwdriver or a pry bar or anything else. Let's see if I can find the cable first. And then once you follow the cable, it should lead to the release, and then I'll give it a nice tug. And there it is. Now, if you could reach up to this and you went to pull on it and it just didn't wanna move, more than likely, it's because of an issue with the backside of the latch here where it's rusted and rotted and it just doesn't wanna move like it should. If you could grab it and it does function like it should, but for some reason, when you pulled on that handle, nothing happened, it's potentially this cable right here, which is gonna go up and through the firewall and into the passenger compartment, or it could even be the handle itself has an issue. Now, if you happen to notice that your cable or even that handle is broken, more than likely, it's due to the latch on the inside being rusted, and it's not functioning properly, putting extra strain on those two parts.

Okay, friends, if you're lucky enough to be able to get your hood up, the next thing I would wanna do is go ahead and try and get my latch assembly off. That way there I have a nice, clear view of what's going on in the backside because this is the most important side. We wanna make sure we clean this off as much as possible, and then we're gonna lubricate it, so there's no way that any more rust or rot can build up in between.

Okay, friends, so we tried to make a nice video for you on some things to look at or diagnose on your hood latch. Hopefully, you learned a little something along the way. If you did and you wanna talk about it, leave it in the comment section below. If you like the video, make sure you smash on that like button for me, it's going to be in the world. Feel free to subscribe and ring the bell, that way there you can be kept up with all of our latest content. Thanks.