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Title: Bonnet release not working Post by DavidBE on Mar 10th, 2026, 2:43pm The other week I opened the bonnet to clear battery shelf drain-holes to see if that was behind odd little electric problems (my intermittent wipe was intermittently not working ta all), looked around and noticed it was time for a coolant top up, was reaching towards the battery cover - and my phone went: my bank wanting a long conversation. So I closed the bonnet, went indoors, had the conversation, came back out, went to open the bonnet again ... and now the bonnet release was suddenly not working. I'm pretty sure the cable is OK at the bonnet release lever under the dashboard and the problem is at the other end at the front of the engine compartment. So I can't open the bonnet, which might be serious as (i) my car battery is pretty low even with the solar panel trickle charger (I have to park by the pavement and can't run a mains charger to it) so I might need to use a jump starter on it, for which I would need to open the bonnet; and (ii) I have a slow coolant leak and need to top it up every 4 to 6 weeks, and the level was at low when I looked just before the bonnet release failed a couple of weeks ago (been tied up since with my 98 year-old mother, who lives with me and I looked after, deteriorating, going into hospital, and she died this morning). I've found a kitchen implement will fit through the grill and pull the handle one uses under the front of the bonnet to open the bonnet after using the release lever under the dashboard, but that doesn't open the bonnet without having done the other release first. I've searched the forum, I see I'm hardly thee first with this problem, but the solutions I found involved jacking the car up or getting it up on a ramp, and then eitehr reaching up the right side of the radiator and across with thin and long enough arms, or up with the arm and then using a tool made from stiff wire to go across and trip thje release. I can't jack the car up (it's parked beside the pavement in the street) and am also too disabled to crawl around under it and do reaching stretches. I don't suppose anyone has come across a simpler way to release the initial bonnet catch when the release under the dashboard isn't working? |
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Title: Re: Bonnet release not working Post by Pegasus on Mar 11th, 2026, 1:31pm Happened to me about 10 years ago. Unfortunately you do have to be physicaly flexible for this fix (I didn't do it - I took it back to my nearby friendly car enthusiast garage that had just done some work in the engine bay). To get to the cable 1 of them just lay on his back, carefully moved the oil cooler out of the way then reached up and released the mechanism. The cable had disintegrated by (or fallen out of) the bonnet latch, He replaced the cable with brake cable. Said he'd done this many times with cars - never had a comeback. So it may need a garage to sort out if you can't do it. Hopefully by someone who's worked on cars on not just doing bread and butter stuff - plenty of them about who'll give you a lot of bull (bitter experience). Whereabouts are you - someone might be able to recommend a garage. Condolences for your loss. My mum died at 98 - "Frailty of old age". Body just gave up though she was still as sharp as a pin |
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Title: Re: Bonnet release not working Post by DavidBE on Mar 11th, 2026, 4:50pm Ah, OK - thanks. I've just been trying to see if I could work a cheap borescope/endoscope I bought for no good reason from Amazon awhile ago into position by the catch, but just can't direct where the camera-and-tool end go well enough. So it will have to be the garage, then ... just hoping nothing goes wrong needing under-bonnet access for a few days while I have to go to funeral directors, death registrars etc. My current garage are pretty good. For years I went to the one in my village, who were great, and one of their guys was ex-Ford who had worked on Scorpios. Unfortunately the two old guys who owned the place retired and sold it seven years ago, and things went downhill for me there. And I was eventually told to my face that they did not want to bother with old cars like mine (the '97 2.3 saloon I had before getting the current '98 Cosworth Estate in 2020) any more, or provide lifts for me to or back from the garage on the other side of the village. So I returned to my previous garage, where I was one of the original customers when it opened in 1982 until I left the area after university in 1984, then went back to them when I returned in 1995 until moving to the village 7 miles away in 1998. They are pretty good (and managed to change the thermostat after I finally managed to source one, which isn't trivial on these 24V 2.9 Cosworth engines). And they are happy to fetch or return me the 7 miles (although all cars rapidly give me hideous back and leg pain when I sit in them other than the Scorpio which actually eases the pain instead, which is one reason I'm still in one and wanting to continue). Yes, I had a phone call earlier from the medical examiner who'd reviewed the notes and verified the cause of death for my mother - frailty and old age. But she'd not only become bed-bound, unable to stand even if helped, starting last July, so I've been looking after her in a full powered hospital bed in the dining room (she's lived with me since I bought a house in 1998 she could come and live with me in after she couldn't stay where she was after my father died), but she was suffering from dementia too. Oddly enough, she showed no signs of dementia until, late in 2023, she had a fall, was initially kept in hospital, and on the 3rd day in hospital she suddenly, out of nowhere, started showing the first signs of dementia. She'd been getting worse and worse, and really didn't know where or when she was or what was going on, which frightened her a lot, although she did always know my name and I was to be trusted - though who she thought I was on the days she was sure it was a particular day in 1945 I'm not at all sure. Last July she suddenly showed two symptoms both of her older sisters did a few months apart in 2007, and they both died within two months, so I wasn't actually expecting my mother to make it to October last year and reconciled myself to her loss then. The state she's been in, and her constant expressed wish to just go to sleep and die as she re-discovered her mental and physical state anew and with horror each day, her death was actually really a mercy. Oh, meant to say thanks for the details of the latch fixing method. I'll pass that on to the guys in the garage. |
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