Hi,

with the following procedure I was able to open my 1998 daimler super V8 hood without drilling any hole or bending any sheet metal.

My hood failed to open normaly because the cable disengaged from the latch mechanism.

The cable disengaged from the latch mechanism because the fitting where the cable engages into the latch is stupidely oriented toward the bottom and since the latch spring itself became loose, the cable fall down and out of the latch mechanism.

The latch spring itself became loose because one of the hook where the spring attaches is made of plastic and eventually gets split apart.

So the broken plastic hook where the spring attaches is the original root cause, with amplified consequences due to the stupid cable fitting oriented down.

I show in last picture how I reinforced the spring hook. As second preventive measure, I installed a collar around the hood cable so that if it would become loose again it would not disengaged from the latch.

Now, how did I proceded to release the hood latch?

First I must say that i spend an entire week in searching, reading, thinking, testing, but when ready, it took me only a few minutes reproducing the right movement with the right tool and pop my hood open.

The below picture shows a tool that i made with a 3mm steel wire.

• The curbed extremity must become in contact with the latch in order to release the hood
• The white tape mark indicates how much the tool must be inserted through the wheel arch body inside the engine bay (white tape must remain visible).
• I am attaching a scale 1 pdf (on A4 sheet of paper) of the tool at the bottom of this post.
• If by chance you are still able to release the other latch (half-open the hood and remove bulkhead cover), or if you have another XJ8 next to you, you can visually experiment the shape and positioning of the tool before proceeding with the "blind" opening of the culprit latch.

Before inserting the tool, one need to remove the whell arch liner by pulling out the plastic rivets. The hole that appears after removing the upper rear plastic rivet is the one used to insert the tool and reach the hood latch (camera oriented toward the rear of the vehicule, left side wheel arch shown).



The below picture shows how the tool must be oriented and the red arrow indicates where to push on the latch mecanism (left side latch shown).
Note in the green rectangle the plastic hook where the spring is attached. In this picture, the plastic hook has already been reinforced with an aluminum plate.



Cheers,

Bruno