hello - the primary latch on my 450 is stuck. i have seen a couple posts on this forum about the secondary latch hanging up. but nothing on the primary. this has happened several times - this leaves me with about an 8th of a inch of bounce on the hood-- about every 20 times i open the hood it gets stuck hard. then after days of trying to open it, it miraculously opens and runs fine for a while and does it again. i have lubed all surrounding areas with graphite, as oil will just attract dirt and foul things worse. i have tried pulling the cable at the hand release with a vice grips, but no give. this is the worse it has ever been. i once got the hood to open by jacking the driver's side of the car up, but won't work this time - amazing! if i ever get the hood up, what do i do to stop this from happening again -- please help -- pat
ps: the battery is dead --

 

Is there any slack in the cable when you pull the handle in the car? there should be some resistence when you pull the handle, if not the cable to the primary could have broken, or it is very loose, it is always a good idea to check the cable in the engine bay and the primary lock and give it a dap of grrease now and then

 

seems it only got one engine hood catch.

the outer part of the cable must not be holding enough counter force or have gone in on the front side.

try pulling both of them with more force.

[IMG]local://upfiles/1/1D473A3A243A405D9F755BC6107B961E.jpg[/IMG]

 

thanks guys for the response - wizard, no, there is very little resistance when i pull the lever - great having the blowup, sleepwalker- now i have to think about busting my back to get up under there and remove the lever - looks like just one screw holding it - thanks again, patrick

 

hello, got the hood open - it was pretty straight forward to get to the release handle - just had to drop two panel pieces - the handle was held with two phillips screws - when i dropped the hood release handle, i was able to pull down on the whole handle assm. which popped the hood. found that the previous owner had replaced the release lever and not reinstalled the firewall grommet passthru -- this allowed for slack in the cable, so it buckled instead of opening the hood latch -- the hole is bondoed over, so the grommet won't go in the hole. so, i will just let the hood release lever dangle and pull the whole thing to open the hood. the battery wasn't dead - the ground post for the negative battery cable was loose - the weld had broken where it was attached to the frame -- was able to tighten it enough to get the thing to start ==- thanks again, pat

 

it's a mercedes so better fix it.