So let me explain guys..
Last night my hood didn't latch and I noticed it bouncing a bit while driving to the gas station.
It was pouring too heavily to bother with it so I simply went inside and went to bed.. It was late.
This morning I tried looking at it again and I came to the conclusion that it must have been broken.
No amount of jumping on it, pushing it down, or anything would make the latch latch onto the hood...
I couldn't find any pictures of Explorer hoods so I didn't know what it was supposed to look like, but I imagined that the latch attached to a sort of metal hook...
Well, because I was imagining there was supposed to be a metal hook there on my hood, I was very disappointed to see that there WASN'T one.
I gave up trying and decided to drive to work... and I was driving slowly!
I knew my hood was loose and bouncy so I was driving with relative caution... but never did I think 45MPH was enough to make the hood slam upwards. Of course, this is my first experience with this stuff so it might sound like common sense to you guys, but it wasn't. Forgive my ignorance!
So, as you can imagine, the hood came slammed up against my windshield and scared the ###### out of me. I calmly pulled over to the side of the road and put my hazards on. Of course I was scared...but what are you gonna do, right?
Now my hood was all messed up and that's why I posted this.. hoping someone had some advice.
Well, I drove home during my lunch break VERY SLOWLY THIS TIME... and proceeded to take the hood straight off.
I then drove straight to the junkyard to grab a new hood.
Of course, on my way to the junkyard, it started raining heavier than it ever has here in Florida, just shooting gallons of rain into my engine bay. Yesssss.
Parked under a tree in an effort to keep it as dry as possible and ran through the muddy junkyard ruining my shoes and getting soaked.
Found a hood and was sinking in the mud trying to take it off. Looking at all these hoods, I realized there was never a metal hook thing to begin with! My hood wasn't missing anything dangit!
Carried the heavy freakin' hood along with my toolbag back through the junkyard and was taken advantage of--paying a whopping $70 for the freakin' thing... this hood is ugly, too. Had to break in to my savings to afford it.
Obviously it's still pouring rain and I was soaked so trying to balance the hood and screw it in at the same time and keep it aligned was nearly impossible....
So I just kept it on there with 2 screws and drove to the gas station right around the corner very carefully.
I used the cover of the gas pump roof to put the hood back on.
As you can imagine, it's not fun to put a hood back on by yourself.
Anyway...
I put this hood on and, just like the one last night, the latch wouldn't latch to the freakin' hood.
No matter what I did, jump on it, punch it, swear at it...nothing would make this hood closed. I thought I just wasted $70 on a hood and the hood wasn't even my problem.
WELLLLL.... some kind soul comes along and says "Hey, everything alright?"... mind you, he's driving a Ford truck as well.
I tell him I just put a new hood on and the freakin' thing won't close.
After looking at it, he explained to me how the latch works... and then he told me to go pull the hood release lever in the car...
*POP*
The hood lock was locked, and pulling that hood release made it... well, release.
After doing that, the hood closed up right away.
This makes me wonder if my old hood was just being blocked by the hood lock last night...
If I had just went and pulled the hood release lever it might have fixed it.
However, now it's too late. I've already paid $70 for a much less appealing hood, and my old hood is all bent up from slammed all the way back.
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Man oh man, I really had a bad day today.
I'm thinking about buying one of those yellow paint marker things that they use at the junkyard and marking my old hood... then bringing it in as if it was the hood I bought today..
Maybe they'll give me a $70 refund.
buuuuuut who knows where to find those markers in the right color..
Ugh.
[MENTION=85020]vq5speed[/MENTION], I spent $1200 on it. All of these problems have appeared weeks after having it, I can't imagine he had many issues with the truck.