StratfordShark

Reguloar readers will know I'm replacing hood release cable, giving rise to many dumb questions on this forum!

I'm also changing the upper and lower hood latches for good measure.

The release was sometimes hard to pull before the inner cable broke at the pull handle.

Meantime I've been opening the hood by ducking under car and using a long pry bar and torch to push the release cable, so I knew the lower latch was very rusty (the biggest problem opening hood this way was flakes of rust in my eyes).

Now I've drilled out the rivets you may want a proper look. I had to spray some penetrant on the cable so I could pull it out of the latch, even with set screw holding it fully undone.

As it's riveted in it's hard to service this item regularly, but you can see that it gets very rusty here in rainy old England, so not surprised it was seizing up.

Mrmerlin

and in the picture is the plate (just behind the hood latch) that give some of the car specs its found on ROW vehicles but not the USA cars. The USA cars do have the rivet holes though.
I would coat the spring and the mechanisim with some sort of moly spray grease before you install the new part