DIY: Hood Won't Release or Open Latch Stuck Fix

[Joe@ZSpeed]

A local customer came in today with the passengers side latch not releasing on his 2011 370Z Nismo, Rather than letting the body shop cut a hole in his hood as they wanted to I told him to bring it down and see what we could do for him.
Getting into it I removed the bumper as I could not find the cable from below or find the latch or see it for that matter.

We removed the front bumper by releasing the drivers side latch with the hood release lever as normal, By doing this we could access the clips holding the bumper on the top part under the hood with a small screw driver and release them than continued to remove bumper as normal.

Found I could have got to the cable if I knew where it was placed.

Pics below will show the small black cable you need to find, Just by pulling the cable it will release the latch if the same thing has happened to your hood cable and the end has broken off where it connects to latch, Someone had already tried to zip tie this on evidently when it was broken installing the dual intakes.

This picture is looking up from the front of bumper opening (bumper removed at this point) but should be accessible from front of car without removing bumper.


Reach through front of bumper, Grab cable and pull to the right and down. This should release the hood latch, This is possible for drives side by removing the rubber hood trim to the left of headlight and pulling the cable there as it runs directly underneath the black rubber foam seal.