How do I open the hood - dead battery and broken door handle.

[Tubbs770]

I feel like an idiot, and hope someone out there knows how to pop the hood of an 02 mountaineer.

So I was fixing the drivers side door latch and forgot to attach the external handle bar inside the door and closed it. Now if I could get the car to unlock this wouldn't be and issue because I can open another door, but I disconnected the battery. So not only are all the doors locked, but the only door I can unlock I cannot open because the door handle is not connected.

Therefore I need to either break a window or somehow open the hood to reconnect battery, or hook up a battery from under the car to open the locks.

Anyone have experience with the hood or hooking up a battery from under the car?

Thanks!

 

[boominXplorer]

I'm sure if your creative you could get to the hood latch itself with a screwdriver. Might have to come from the bottom though.

 

[partsman48210]

I've done this a hundred times but with scrap cars so I didn't care if I broke pieces of the grill but there's usually a metal tab you can reach through the grill with a long skinny screwdriver. It's where the cable connects for the hood release. Carefully push towards the driver side and your hood will pop. Youcll need a flashlight. Hopefully it isn't covered on this model. That I don't know

 

[D Hook]

Is there a way to feed positive voltage from an external battery to the cable connected to the starter? (Disconnect from the starter first?) Then attach a negative to the frame of the vehicle? Will that feed the locks so you could open the hatch? I've never tried this but it seems it would work if that positive cable feeds the fuse box as well as the starter. I don't know.

 

[Tubbs770]

Problem solved!

I did something similar to what D Hook said. I hooked my battery charger to a huge red wire under the car and used the key less remote to unlock the doors. Then just opened to rear passenger side door and crawled in to open the drivers side front door. Interesting to note the front passenger side door did not unlock. only the rears unlocked. Thanks for the ideas!

 

[D Hook]

Glad you got it solved. Didn't know if that would work or not but now we do. Thanks for posting up your results!

 

[Donystoy]

I agree that connecting an external battery to the red power wire on the starter would do the trick. Connect the negative side to a good ground and you should be good to go. From looking at the wiring diagram you should not have to remove the connection from the starter. If for whatever reason this connection point is not accessible, the trailer hitch connection might work if there is a red 12 volt feed wire. This would probably only be on a 7 pin connector.
Edit: glad you got in! Now you have to find out why the passenger side did not open.

 

[Number4]

Never mind, screen hadn't refreshed.