hood release cable is seized

[snoopy1972]

can anyone tell me how to open my hood on the S60 when the cable is seized. I pull on the handle inside the cab and the cable will not move. Is there an easy way to release the hood from the front grill or underneath the car?

[oragex]

It happens and it is not easy to fix. What someone did was removing the handle, then cut a little bit around the cable shield to expose the metal wire inside, then keeping the shield with one hand he pulled on the wire with a pliers. Again, replacing the cable is not an easy task but has been discussed somewhere on forums

[snoopy1972]

Thanks for your reply I will try that.

[- Pete -]

You will inevitably need to replace the cable, and possibly the pull lever too. You'll know if & when the pull lever breaks. The ball end of the cable mates up to a "socket" molded into the proximal end of the pull lever. Especially when it's cold, this likes to break rendering the pull lever useless. Everything requires more input energy when it is cold, and your hood latches & cable abide by this. If the socket on the pull lever shatters you must use the vise grip on the ball end method.

An important tip, to make your cable & lever last long enough so you can replace it/them, let your car get nice and hot before you yank on the cable. A heated garage is best, but letting the car run or drive for a good length of time radiates enough heat into the surrounding material (latches & cable, primarily) to ease the strain on the cable. If it's super cold & you haven't let the car get hot, don't even bother. You'll break your pull lever and or rip the ball end off the cable and then it's only a short matter of time before you run out of bare cable to pull on, at which point you really will have a hard time getting under the hood.

New cables are $36, a pull lever is usually around $7 on eBay or a scrap yard.
The cable lives in an opaque, white-ish sleeve that runs from down by your left foot to the engine bay. Both your new cable AND the opaque sleeve are premarked with colored tape so You know how far to insert the new cable. You will feed your new cable through this sleeve. It's really not that bad, removing all the crap from the drivers side of the engine bay is what's time consuming. I started by removing the pull lever, pulling the carpet back a bit, removing the entire airbox & any other intake piping that will be in the way. I then had to remove the front bumper cover on our XC. You will also need to liberate your radiator core support as the latches are on the underside of it. From here re-routing your new cable is pretty straight forward. At this point, I chose to completely turn IN the ~1" bumpers that thread into the underside of the hood. They're used for body panel alignment mostly, but also for when you Heman slam your hood closed. Turning them in relieves some of the backpressure on the latches, ultimately lessening the amount of force needed to pop the latches with the cable.
Reassemble in reverse.

[dwaldron]

For my 2002 V70

Unbolt but do not remove black metal frame
To do this
partially remove front bumper
- in wheel wells, loosen screws using T25
this loosens black piece that slides back
- remove 6 push restraints from top of black frame
- pull and pop out middle of bumper
- slide out bumper sides
Unbolt but do not completely remove both headlights
- looking straight at left light, there is a 10 bolt on right into black frame
- around left edge on side of car, remove 2 T25 bolts to get access to 10mm bolt
- do the same for right
- pull headlights out a bit so tabs clear off black frame on top
Unbolt but do not remove black metal frame
- remove all 10mm top bolts, keep track of where each one goes
- remove 2 bottom bolts that are under the bumper, so pull bumper back

pull out black frame to get to hood locks

The cable goes under the air filter chamber.
3 plastic clips hold it down
use a small (I forget the size) socket on a socket extender. push down and the 4 pins will come together
and pry up from the bottom

Feed the cable into the white tube which comes out under the dash

[E Showell]

If the cable is still connected to the lever try this-- you need a helper.

If your hood release lever moves some, but not all the way, have helper gently depress hood near hood latch. Pull back on release lever and see if you get the rest of its travel. If so, exhale, lift the hood up an inch and release it with the hood latch.

That won't solve your cable problem, but it might get you in the engine bay.