Aaron Keating

Okay, as ever the Vette has managed to impress me with yet another thing broken that I've never seen broken before on a car or had break. (The vette is an 89)

I was going to pull a spark plug or two today, just to see what they looked like.

Pulled back on the release and the driver side popped up like it's supposed to.

Passenger side? Not so much.

So I start messing around with it, it's given me some trouble before on uneven ground and I figured maybe it was the car flexing around like limp noodle. Parked it on level ground and again, no dice.

Started messing with the cables by hand and the next thing I know, I have a broken cable in my hand, and another one not responding at all to any input, even manual input. Neither cable is giving me anything on the hood either at this point.

I'm guessing one goes to each side of the car.

So here's the question for you guys. How do you get the stupid hood up with a broken hood latch, the wipers seem to be in the way of trying to find the cables under the hood reaching under the cowl (or maybe it's my big fingers unable to get far enough under the hood from the cowl)

And what kind of work would be involved in converting the hood release to a more sensible, pull out rod, vs the stupid hinge latch the C4 has while I am at it.

I know some guys around here have whipped up some emergency hood releases for under the cowl.

Stupid car, I swear it knows that I'm going to be giving it major surgery in 9 days. (I bought a new torque wrench just for the coming -planned- work too).

Ah well, at least my door seals now have a double gasket setup. I did manage to get that done today.

Kmcoldcars

Some people have had luck by going in with the door open and releasing the catch. Others remove a fender inner panel and access it that way. The vendors sell a tool designed to open the hood after the cables break. Some of us make emergency hood release cables before they are needed so we can open our hoods after the regular cable breaks..
There are many threads on these methods. If you search you will find them.

Just BOB

Turn the wipers on and then switch the ignition off when they get to the top of the sweep. I don't know if that will gain you anything or not. I made a couple of emergency release rods out of coathangar wire and cycling the wipers makes it a whole lot easier to access them.

The release lever under the dash gives you leverage that you won't have when pulling directly on the latch arm, so don't be alarmed when you really have to tug to release the latch.

corvetteronw

Here is a video on how to use the tool:

Aaron Keating

Thanks guys, just ordered the hood release tool. And will be making the emergency release cables soon as well.

There are times when this car makes me wish I had bought another F Car instead. Sheesh.

Sweet 90

IMO a big mistake. I bought one of those five years ago, and all it did was scratch the beejesus out of the underside of my hood. That tool now resides in the bottom of a drainage pond as we speak I found it much simpler to remove the inner fenders and use a long screwdriver to release the hood. Good luck

gerardvg

Do it now do not put it of, remember if you install a new hood release cable and it is not adjusted correctly she wont open.
Installing an emergency hood latch release wire/cable is so simple and easy, why wait and tempt fate

Aaron Keating

I'll be making the emergency err ''emergency'' latch cables as soon as I get the tool in and get the hood up.

This car is apparently trying to suicide. I"m not even sure what the hell happened on the way home from work, but the wipers are bent all to hell now and were non functional for 4 out of the 7 miles to my house, in the dark, fog, and rain on country roads. I'll look at it tomorrow, in daylight. When it's not raining.

I feel like I'm getting to the have the desire to say "One more thing like this and I will find a nice long cliff somewhere and let the vette go for an off road excursion."

speedycat3

The wiper probably came off the retaining hole. It happened to me the other day and I just pressed it back in and pushed the latch.

Aaron Keating

Both of them?

The arms don't even operate. It tries and then fails.

I just parked it and walked away. Because if I started working on it in the dark after it did that to me, on a hair raising drive -with- working wipers I'd probably have taken a cinder block to the windshield instead and parted the car out afterwards.

speedycat3

If one of them came off it might be blocking the other and getting tangled up.

Aaron Keating

Knowing my luck with this damn car, it'll be a wiper arm that popped off and decided to go for a ride on the other wiper.

Wonder if I can put a wiper arm back on, with a hood that is stuck down.
Depending on what happened, maybe I will be pulling fenders off tomorrow.. and hoping I have a long enough screw driver to manually unlatch the stupid hood.

Kmcoldcars

This ia a quote from your first post.
It seems an attitude readjustment may be necessary. You are blaming the car when you apparently knew the hood cables tended to break with advancing age but you chose to do nothing about being prepared for when they did break.
Do not blame the car.
I understand your frustrations. When we get a new to us car there are always a few things that need attention. After tending to them you should find the C4 is a very nice driving, reliable car. Good luck.

lt4obsesses

Well, that would be one way to get the hood to open up. These are old cars man, this stuff is going to happen. Look at like, "Oh goodie, I get antoher oppourtunity to learn something new!" ...okay, maybe not, but every problem has a solution...and every solution has a problem.

This happened to me, but it was more of an adjustment issue, the cable was still intact. Get a new cable and make the e-release cables and you'll be back to lovin' her in time.

Aaron Keating

I inspected the wipers this morning. And I'm not even rightly sure how what happened, happened. I've never (and I worked at Advance for 3 years at one point. And I've seen some real doozies for wiper failures in that time.) ever seen a wiper fail like this. Some how the wire of one, shot out, bent and tangled into the other wiper blade.

The added stress then caused the other wire on the same blade, to bend down. There are some fairly bad scratches now on the windshield, towards the bottom of the stroke. I haven't driven it yet this morning, while there will be direct sunlight hitting it. So I don't know if I'll end up needing to replace the windshield ASAP or not.

The Stud for the mounting, seems fine, and the arms themselves -seem- okay. I'll test those more thoroughly once I replace the blades, last thing I need is to damage the windshield further by testing the wipers. Tentatively I'll say this one most likely is not the -car-'s fault.

KM: The emergency cables I'd read about were done in case of fire. Or at least one posters were. Yeah I probably should have done it the moment I read about it. But I've owned other old cars, and never had even hints of that kind of problem. (Because F car engineers evidently are more intelligent than Vette engineers when it comes to utilitarian issues) Why the hell did they not have a pull rod instead of a stupid hinge? No matter what at the end of the day it's a worse design by a pretty large margin, if for nothing else it puts a good bit of stress on the cables at the bending point.

It's the stupid -little- things that tick me off about this car. Intake manifold? Yeah that's par for the course it's a GM. Brakes, yeah everyone has to service those sooner or later. Weatherstripping? Same deal. The mechanical bits they did such a good job on. (other than the horrendous chassis flex with the roof off, and the car's squirm over rough roads)

Then you get things like... hood release hinge designs. Center console design with it's faulty by design metal tang which is mounted into really thin plastic, the Atari Dash (need I say more on that one) things like screw locking center cap covers instead of just using a locking lug. Targa instead of T Top. Door mounted wiper controls. (instead of just putting it on the turn signal and cruise control rod.. like the Camaros and every other GM had even in those years) It's just maddening. Especially when it's one thing right after another, week in and week out.

I suppose the bright side is, there isn't much more that can actually go wrong with this car, and there won't be any 1989 or previous owner's work left in it when I'm done.

Just BOB

Probably self inflicted

Quoting from your original post:

I know I have created more than my share of problems without realizing it until after the fact.

Aaron Keating

If it was the arms I could see that. This was on the blade though.

I suppose an arm failure of some kind could have applied pressure to the edge of a wiper blade and forced the shoot out. We'll see when I get new blades on. At least it's supposed to be sunny the rest of the week.

Aaron Keating

Something is out of adjustment on the wiper arms.

Because the new blades didn't help.

I did wise up and buy the all rubber style so when they collided they couldn't actually hurt each other.

So I'm waiting for the tool to arrive.

Vetteblack-96

Aaron, is this your only vehicle or do you have something else to drive also? I have the same frustrations and feel just like you do with the cinder block! Sometimes it's best just to walk away from it for a while and then come back and methodically work on the little problems that make you want to smash something. I have a nice dent in my motorcycle tank from where I lost my temper with it. It's not repairable w/o buying a new tank and I don't want to get in that position with my Vette. That could really cost some $$$$$.

Aaron Keating

Tool arrived. I'll be putting it to the test once the weather picks back up. It's frigging cold. (weather is supposed to be fair all the way to the weekend when it's supposed to warm up for us again)

Looking at the tool and how it's made though, I'm very skeptical.

Vetteblack: yeah it's my daily ride, unfortunately.

On the plus side, if I fix all this mess, and get it's mechanicals sorted there's a nice 98-02 white TA for sale for less than what I could get this car for in trade. I haven't looked at it yet (as if I need more temptation to buy one of my favorite cars of all time, especially when this one is being such a pain in the ***) but if it has a stick.... I might do something about the ''vette problem'' once and for all. The headers, x pipe, high flow cats &mufflers, lower intake manifold, plugs etc would really have to wake this thing up. Especially since that TA is in one of my favorite colors for that body no less.