I found both the plastic hat looking part and the metal clip that holds the cable secure on the floor inside my car, and it really made my freakin day! – So now I had to fix something I can’t find anymore!!!
Talking about this side of the EOM cable:
So next I found the topic on this forum about how to make a tool that fits through the grill by the wipers to force open the hood latch...
BTW - Use a 1/4" steel rod to make the tool shown in the topic...The 5/16" rod originally mentioned was too large to fit through my 75 Vega grill opening where the latch is located. The tool I made from 1/4" steel next worked to open the hood, so it stays inside the car now just in case I ever need it again.
I painted mine black just to keep it from rusting up.
My tool looks something like this:
So then I started looking for a possible replacement cable, and only really found an aftermarket hood cable on overpay.com (eBay) with a handle that DIDN'T work right because of the wrong angle of the cable to handle relationship. The cable just bound up too much in the new parts to make it work because the cable has to be routed through the vent panel by the drivers feet then angle upwards to reach the latch area…too many curves/angles for a good smooth operating cable for my liking…so the new cable went in the garbage can where it belonged in the first place.
So I started to think, why not just fix the cable I already have somehow. Both of my cable ends (swaged on ends) were still intact, but the black plastic hat looking part where the cable fits into the handle under the dash broke off. So nothing would now secure the cable from slipping through the hood release handle..
So off to Ace Hardware I went, with my broken cable and Hood release handle in my hands.
I started looking for some small threaded tubing (threads on outside of tubing) that the swaged ball on the driver side end of the cable would slide through (in the handle area) but NOT be so large in diameter as to slip over the end of the EOM cable. This threaded tube is going to act as a spacer and l am using it to hold the whole cable solid to the hood release handle.
I held up the new threaded tubing end to where the end of the round plastic part used to be located on the cable , and made a mark where the threaded end was now located further back on the OEM cable. I used my dremel tool to carefully cut back the plastic off the cable even further than where it broke off.
I now had the cable wire exposed on the handle side of the cable about 2" from the ball on the end, and I left the plastic end where I stopped trimming with a flat edge for the new threaded part to butt up to...the wire in cable goes from the edge, inside the 3/8" threaded piece, then that threaded tube bolted onto original OEM handle with washers and nuts to hold the whole cable solid where it used to have the plastic hat part originally clipped to the handle.
The threaded parts were found in the Lamp Repair area of Ace Hardware. I used a piece of 1.5 inch long threaded tubing that was about 3/8” round. Just big around enough inside to let the swaged cable end slide through…but would still allow the flat edge of the threaded tube to butt up against a modified cable end.
Then I bought washers and nuts to thread onto to the threaded piece that would allow me tighten the new threaded tubing part onto the OEM handle. I slipped the cable end through the threaded part that was now secured to the handle, and figured out approximately where the rest of the plastic cable part would need to be trimmed back to, so the remaining plastic part of the OEM cable would butt up against the new threaded end secured into the handle.
The EOM Handle looks like this:
At this point the cable would work, but I didn’t like having the plastic end moving around at the end of the threaded part mounted to the handle, so I used two small hose clamps to go over the remaining plastic on the EOM cable and over the threaded part I bolted to the handle. TADA that kept the cable secure, but I wasn’t sure it would stay that way forever…so I just wrapped Black tape over both the end I made to the end of the cable I trimmed back, and covered up the hose clamps.
That did the trick, the EOM modified cable now works fine and still has adjustments that can be made if needed, by loosening the nuts on either side of the handle and turning the nuts one way or the other to tighten or loosen the length of the cable.
I tend over explain things, and didn't provide any completed pictures
If you are interested in more info/pics let me know
Vega2008