Weston

I went to replace the battery on my recently acquired '83 944, but I can't get the hood open. Does anyone have any tips or tricks for getting the hood open without destroying anything? I pull the hood release cable and can clearly hear the latch moving, but there's no pop noise and the hood doesn't pop up either. I tried pushing down on it to excercise the spring, and even a careful attempt to gently pry it, but no luck. The weather is very cold, but the hood moves down when I push down, so it's not totally frozen or anything. It worked this morning, then I drove it 85 miles home, and now I can't get it. Thanks for any info.

PCA 944

Same happened to me. Except the hood release lever was cut, so I had to go under the hood and manually unlock it.

It is a huge pain in the ***, so I hope someone else has a method. It was easier for me because the radiator piping was off the car.

Luis de Prat

If you can hear the latch moving, that's a good sign. Means the cable is still attached to it.

Here's a trick. Get a helper to push down on the hood while you pull the hood release lever. Make sure you pull while the person is pushing down on the hood.

This should get it open for you. BTW, the 83 is a great 944 and also pretty rare. I hope you can get it where you want it and enjoy it like I did for many years.

SoCal Driver

Take the lever off of the inside kick panel and use pliers to pull the cable. If you are lucky the cable has just slipped a little bit at the latch and all you need is a fraction of an inch more travel.

Weston

Thanks guys. I had a friend push down on it while I pulled the relase and that worked. Once I got the hood opened, I discovered that the left headlight comes into contact with the hood cable when moving/up down. Not sure if that was really the problem or not, but I zip-tied it out of the way and sprayed PB Blaster on the hood latch and it's spring... the hood release worked great after that.