Safety Upgrade - Adding an emergency engine lid release cable.

Adding an emergency engine lid release cable – I have read stories about the very rare occurrence when the engine lid release cable fails. This is a problem as releasing the latch to replace the cable can be difficult especially on cars with a fixed-wing. 

Fortunately adding an emergency release cable is easy. I used a length of solid core steel galvanized picture hanging wire for this purpose.

• From inside the engine compartment, I drilled a small hole behind the driver side corner light housing and;
• Fished the wire through the hole and out the space above the light fixture between the bumper cover and the steel body panel.
• I threaded the other end of the wire through the extra hole in the latch release lever and threaded a nut on the end of the wire as a stop. In this way when using the regular latch release cable the added cable simply slides through its latch release lever hole and doesn't bind.
• Coiled up an extra length of picture hanging wire behind the corner lamp and reinstalled the fixture.

Now if the latch won’t actuate because the primary cable is broken I can simply unscrew the lamp fixture and pull on the backup release wire.