I was trying to put my car into the radiator service position, but ran out of time before it got too cold and dark. I closed the car up for the night and then realized my mistake. I closed the hood...and the hood release cable is disconnected! Anyone know how to release the hood when the cable is disconnected?

Any help is appreciated. Thank you!!

2008 Cooper S

 

Wow, what a mess. However, after calming down I was able to solve the problem. While embarrassing, I will leave this post here for anyone else that may be as mechanically challenged as myself :-)

To fix this I put the car back up on jacks and looked up to where I thought the latch might be. I found it right around where you flip the lever to open the hood after you have pulled the hood release from inside. Knowing what the cable looked like was the key for me. So I reached way up and polled on the metal part that the cable was connected to. It popped! I got out and tried to open the hood, but it wouldn't open!!

10 minutes later after trying over and over to release it again I finally got mad and tried to pull the hood up. Turns out that the driver side was loose, but the passenger side was still latched. Could their be two latches? Yep! This one was in the same spot, but on the opposite side. Luckily my downpipe was off, so this was an easy reach and pull (same looking cable).

And that solved my problem. What a night!

 

If you hadn't solved the problem, I was goint to suggest something like this.

 

I just happened to make the same mistake yesterday. Same reason - front end going to service position. Luckily my headlights were out and I just put my hand through the headlight opening.