ARGH!!!! For the life of me, I cannot figure out why my hood wont shut! It will go into open-latch position, but won't engage the locking latch to fully close and lock. You can move the locking latch with finger, and upon observation everything is absolutely fine - goes into all three positions. Greased EVERYTHING down. Locking latch, pull up handle, the actual bar that goes into the locking latch... etc. EVERYTHING.

My reasoning tells me that the lock bar is not engaging the latch - either something is stopping contact or it is hitting it a little off so that instead of sliding and locking, it is just plain getting jarred to a stop. All of this make sense? What the *@$&*?* is wrong?!

 

TTT - sorry I would not normally do this, but this is in fact a handicap. Altho it is not affecting the engine, I cannot drive my car with the hood like this. Someone please help any info is needed.

 

The latch assembly is vertically adjustable. If you loosen the two bolts that hold it in you can slide it up or down as needed. Try raising the latch a little and see if it'll catch the hood better.

This happened to mine many years ago too. I ended up replacing the latch though because it wasn't snapping onto the hood bracket. The hood just bounced off of it. But it was still necessary to play with that vertical adjustment to get the new latch high enough to catch the hood. So maybe you should start by trying that. If that's not the answer, then you'll probably need a new latch.

In the mean time, I wrapped a wire through the hood bracket, dropped it down through the nose to the underside of the car, where I used it to pull the hood down, and I secured the wire underneath.

 

Thanks for the latch tip - I would probably have tried that if I didn't get it to work. I loosened the lock bar (underside of hood) and tightend it up on one end a little so it could sort of slide adjust. Clicked right into place.

Thanks tho, I think your idea might have worked as well.