How to Remove Hood Latch 2003-07 Honda Accord

Hi, I'm Mike from 1A Auto. We've been selling auto parts for over 30 years.

Hi, everyone. Sue here from 1A Auto and today on our '07 Honda Accord we're going to show you the location and how to dismount and remount the hood latch. If you need any parts of your car, click on the link below and head on over to 1AAuto.com.

The hood release is on the driver's side left side kick panel down by the drivers left foot. It's clearly marked with a hood on it. Pull the cable, the safety latch, release the latch, is right here in the center, right above the H symbol. Then you have your hood rod and it goes right into the indicator. You see the arrow pointing down to that square. Pop it in there.

We're going to release the body clips on the shroud area on the front of the nose of the engine, and I have these little pliers that have pinchers on them and they go on each side, and you can pull that body clip right out. Remove all of them.

Last body clip and now we have two Phillips plastic body style clips. I just use a small pocket screwdriver and just turn it slowly. The threads on these because they're plastic on plastic, it just really is ... there's no method to it.

Now we can grab our cover. Lift it up.

I raised the support of my vehicle so I could get underneath it and take down the splash guard at the front here where it attaches to the front plastic bumper. Same procedure as up on top with these clips.

Now they're supposed to be some metal bolt for these tins, but the car is gone through some ages of salt and sand, so they're all broken off. I lowered the vehicle mid range for me so that I can grab a Phillips screwdriver and you'll see the actual Phillips head right here attaching that fender well. I take this out and repeat the process on the other side.

If you follow the fender line over into the metal fender, the plastic bumper, right in here there are three body clips that just slide the plastic and lock it in. You're going to grab in your fender well and give it a good pull. See at the indents, and then you're going to fall around to the other side. Do the same thing.

Then we have two bolts right here in the same spot on the other side, passenger side, 10 millimeter socket. Now we're going to take those off.

Now we have the two bolts out, we should be able to grab this plastic fender well and just pull it right out.

Whenever you're removing a front bumper, this styrofoam bumper cover is factory, and they usually just use masking tape. As you can see that's straight from the factory. Weather has worn out tape here, so I'm just going to quickly tape this so it's stay sturdy again and it's easier for us to work with.

The latch is located in the front of the hood right, in the center. And we've got this plastic cover we have to remove first. There's just two little tabs in the corner like this and one of the top, you're just going to pull out on it. The same on the other side. Let's lift it up, get it out of the way.

The latch, before I loosen it, I like to take a pen or a sharpie and I'm going to line up where it was so it has a perfect alignment once I reinstall it. There's three 10 millimeter bolts, socket bolts, holding it in place.

Now we can locate the latch and see that that has the electronic sensor that tells the indicator inside if the hood is not locked down. The wire goes down underneath this harness. I'm going to disconnect it here. Squeeze on that tab, pull the harness up. This is the hard part because it does have all that road salt and sand stuck in the harness' connectors. There we go. And then it just clips on the back here. Little pair of needle nose pliers. You can just disconnect the little tab ears. Now we have the freedom of moving this harness up a little, and now you can see the hood cable, how that's designed.

Just take a pair of pliers and just pop this right through. See the cable with the ball end on it. See how it has that loop right through there? We're going to bring that down. Can use a pair of needle nose to get really in there firmly. I'm going to pull the latch so it moves closer to that bracket. Take my needle nose and hold it there and now hopefully I can use my hands to guide that cable down underneath. There we go. That definitely made it easier. Now we have our hood latch dismounted and we can replace it.

To reinstall, we're just going to basically reverse procedure. Just want to take my needle nose pliers again. You got to push this latch forward and hold it there. Take that cable, bring it into the housing, slide it down.

You can see that it's lined up almost. Bring that cable up with your needle nose. We're going to reinstall the cable end. Line those notches up with the middle ear on that bracket and just take a pair of pliers and snap it down in place. Make sure you take that harness and bring it down below behind the other main harness.

I'm going to reline up the bolts. Start them all by hand. You'll see that my marks come into play here as I tighten this down because the bracket is slotted, so it has an actual adjustment to it. Sometimes you'll have a hood that rattles. Someone could have removed the latch and didn't line it up prior, so the hood is actually sitting up too high.

I have my 10 millimeter socket, I'm going to bring those right back down just til they have some drag to it. I'll just take a little pair of pliers and tap it over. That's better. No white paint showing. That's what I want. Snug it down.

I'm going to take this clip, squeeze these ears back so that it will actually poke through there. Prior to that, I'm going to check my connectors out like I like to always do. Everything looks good. No burn marks. Clip this back together, and then just plug it right in that mounting hole.

Let's reinstall the plastic cover. Here we go. Where did it go?

Now we're going to install the front bumper cover. To get a good handle on it. Bring that right in. I'm going to line up the top first. You see these tabs right here. That tab goes right inside that tab on that middle bumper right on both sides. Get one side then come over and do the other side. Line everything up. Just give it a good push.

Make sure you put your fender skirt up inside before you push the final tab in. This side went in nice and smooth.

Before I put any plastic clips in or the Phillips heads on the fender well, I'm going to put in the actual mounting holes up here, line this all up and get it nice and secure before I do that. This side's lined up. Put my 10 millimeter socket head bolt in. Just snugging it and I'm going to go to the other side and see what is going on. See if I can get this to line up.

There we go. Ready to snug these down.

I'm going to raise it up to put fender skirt screws in and then bring it all the way up. I'm going to take the mounting Phillips screw, bring it right in there. Snug that down. Repeat the process on the other side.

This fender skirt goes up underneath the front bumper cover, so there's enough flexibility in it that you can just pry it down. Push it up into place. Now we'll take our plastic inserts ... and put them into place.

If yours is in better contact than this one, you will have once again three 10 millimeter head bolts on each fender well in that side and on this side, and the rest of plastic pins push it and the pins. These ones were missing or broken.

Okay. We're going to bring it down, put our top radiator cover on.

Last piece we're going to install is that upper cover, and you guide the hook latch in. Pretty simple. And then the cover has this little tab right here. You see the plastic cutout. It just going to manipulate it, bend it, put it right inside the fender well. Then we have all our plastic push tabs. Just go around, line them all up and push them into place.

Last two are these the little top screws, the plastic screws. And then I just take the plastic screw, line it up, push it down.

Ready to go. Let's close the hood.

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