Hey, I just bought a 1998 XJ8L, I went to open the hood and the cable popped out as well, was wondering how I would go about opening the hood for now at least, and from which way would it be best to reconnect that cable. I’ll be posting pictures soon… when I figure out how.

 

If you remove the fenderwell liners, look up towards where the latches are and there's usually a hole there you can use to stick a long screwdriver in to push the lever on the latches on each side to open the hood. There are posts within this forum with pics that have some detail. It's not too hard, the liner doesn't even have to come all the way out. In fact, there are two threads on how to do this several rows down on the landing page today...

 

I've seen a post saying there's rubber boots you can pop out & get to the catches from inside the car too. Can't remember which thread to find you the details though.

 

This was a post that avoided drilling from in the fender well.

https://www.jaguarforums.com/forum/x...d-hood-268684/