Hey yall,

So I just picked up a 96 F150 XL, 351w, automatic. The hood will not latch. It latches to the safety latch, but not the primary latch (which connects to the cable to the cab). I thought maybe the primary latch (red arrow?) was stuck in the open position so I lubed it up with some WD40, but it wont budge. I had my wife pull the cable from inside the cab while I watched the latch, and something toward the bottom of the latch is moving (black arrow), so the cable isn't broken. Should there be something on my hood to catch the latch?, because my hood is bare (see picture). Any suggestions?

Thanks for the help!

Bill
Morgantown

 

There should be a small bar going across the hole in the hood. That's what the latch grabs onto. No bar = no solid latch

 

i glanced at this thread and couldn't figure it out, nice catch, cant believe i didn't notice that lol. thats your problem right there.

 

The no bar = no latch, doesn't seem right. I don't have a bar on mine either. It latches directly to the sheet metal of the hood. And is secure.

 

How about the latch with the red arrow? Is that supposed to move when the cable is pulled from the cab? I'll look into the bar

 

My hood is p-ssing me off.latches fine but to open is a 2 person job one to hold the handle out then one to push down and pull up on the hood .any remedy to this ??

 

Well, fixed the problem with a new hoodlatch. By comparing the new one with the old one, i found that the hook pointed to with the red arrow in my earlier post is stuck in the open position. All the wd40 in the world wasn't getting that thing to budge. The sheet metal on the hood comes down and pushes that hook down, which engages another hook hidden in the latch to hook the sheet metal of the hood. When you pull the latch cable from the cab, that "third hidden hook" pops back into the latch, releasing the hood.

Tass96, did you try greasing up the latch and/or loosing up the bolts and moving the latch up a little bit? When installing the new latch on mine, i had to adjust it up/down a little. Too far down and the hood wont engage or if it does, it might be pretty tight.

Thanks again guys.