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Under the Hood
Feb. 18th, 2022 04:16 pmAs I mentioned a few days ago, the hood-release handle on the Astro broke. We ordered a new cable, which arrived today, and Lisa spent a good part of this afternoon replacing it.
( Out With the Old )
The replacement cable is a genuine GM replacement cable, but it still wasn't an easy task to snake the new cable into place. My job was as usual to hold tools and sometimes go pull on the handle while she was testing it. An important bolt got lost, which derailed the whole operation. We think the bolt may be down inside the frame somewhere, but getting at it proved impossible. Lisa found a work-around when we found that there were several of the same type of bolt elsewhere on the van, and one of them wasn't in quite such a critical location, so she was able to to improvise a new bolt for the one she scavenged from the bodywork while moving the old bolt to the key location, which is holding the hood latch in place.
During this process, she took the opportunity to thoroughly clean more than thirty years of grime out of the hood latch.
After much work, Lisa finally got the new cable snaked through the hole in the firewall into the engine compartment, got the grommet that protects the cable through that hole, and then also got the cable snaked over the engine and through a small hole in the front bodywork. From there, she attached it to the hood latch and secured the latch back into place. After testing the latch and confirming that the latch aligned properly with the hood, she lowered the hood and had me pull the release lever. Success!
It's not a total success yet, however, as the new latch handle is not as firmly seated in the front instrument panel trim as the original one was. This is because of the way the original handle broke. Lisa will work on building a reinforcement that will hold the release lever in place more firmly. Until then, we have to a bit careful opening the hood, and that will require special instructions to anyone working on the van such as at oil-change places. Nevertheless, we now can more safely drive the vehicle, as not being able to open the hood could be dangerous.
( Out With the Old )
The replacement cable is a genuine GM replacement cable, but it still wasn't an easy task to snake the new cable into place. My job was as usual to hold tools and sometimes go pull on the handle while she was testing it. An important bolt got lost, which derailed the whole operation. We think the bolt may be down inside the frame somewhere, but getting at it proved impossible. Lisa found a work-around when we found that there were several of the same type of bolt elsewhere on the van, and one of them wasn't in quite such a critical location, so she was able to to improvise a new bolt for the one she scavenged from the bodywork while moving the old bolt to the key location, which is holding the hood latch in place.
During this process, she took the opportunity to thoroughly clean more than thirty years of grime out of the hood latch.
After much work, Lisa finally got the new cable snaked through the hole in the firewall into the engine compartment, got the grommet that protects the cable through that hole, and then also got the cable snaked over the engine and through a small hole in the front bodywork. From there, she attached it to the hood latch and secured the latch back into place. After testing the latch and confirming that the latch aligned properly with the hood, she lowered the hood and had me pull the release lever. Success!
It's not a total success yet, however, as the new latch handle is not as firmly seated in the front instrument panel trim as the original one was. This is because of the way the original handle broke. Lisa will work on building a reinforcement that will hold the release lever in place more firmly. Until then, we have to a bit careful opening the hood, and that will require special instructions to anyone working on the van such as at oil-change places. Nevertheless, we now can more safely drive the vehicle, as not being able to open the hood could be dangerous.
