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25th December 2007, 21:34 #50
Join Date: Dec 2006
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Originally Posted by
I took it to a mates garage, he punched the bottom grill in and removed it, then putting his hand through he unscrewed the main grill from the inside.
Then it was a case of prising open the latch cover, and popping the lock.
Turns out the cable casing had slid out of place next to the headlight, so a simple adjustment and viola ! bonnet is now popping fine. luckily we didnt have to replace the whole cable assembly, damn it looked complicated.
less than an hour to do, didnt want any money but I gave him £25 anyway, and I'll go back to get my timing belt done by him too.
Well, I've just had a very similar problem, bonnet release not working, but on mine the release cable had come out of the bonnet catch.
It was a real hassle to get to the catch mech', took me from 10.30am to 5.00pm!!
Had to remove bumper, of course 3 out of the 6 torx screws in the wheel wells stripped the torx heads and so had to have a slot cut in them to undo, Grrrr!! Then after popping out the 4 plastic rivets underneath I found that there's 2 on top that seem to only be releaseable if you have the bonnet open, Arrrghhh!!
However, I found that if you have removed all the other fittings (ie the 6 screws and the 4 rivets underneath) and you pull the sides of the bumper forwards, you can pull the bumper out enough to get a flat bladed screwdriver ( one with an insulated shaft to protect the paintwork ) in and prise open the plastic rivet on each side. Whoo hoo, bumper off!!
Next problem, My Vec C is a 2003 2.0Dti with aircon, I discover that I have 3, yes , radiators all stacked in front of each other resulting in a clearance space that varies from about 4cm at the bottom to 1-2cm at the top where the grill is on the bonnet and along half the length of the top area there is a plastic shroud that stops all attempts to get even the tiniest of fingers past it.
To get a bit better access I removed the metal box section that is hidden behind the bumper (I'm sure that there's a proper name for it, but I dont know it), easy job 6 torx bolts and it slides off.
I could only just get my hand up far enough to feel with my finger tips the bonnet pin that goes into the catch, so I thought I'll have to do as quoted and remove the bonnet grill. Great idea, but I could only get to the bottom 4 screws because of the 3 stacked radiators (air-con, intercooler, engine cooler) and even then I had to use just a 25mm phillips bit held in vice grips to undo the screws a quarter turn at a time.
I ended up breaking the top mountings for the grill, fortunately they broke without any visible (from the outside) damage, and that enabled me to then prise open the plastic shroud that covers the locking mech' and with a long screwdriver release the bonnet.
I then saw that the end of the release cable had somehow come out of the catch release so it was just a matter of hooking it back in and replacing everything.
Boy what an ordeal, and all this to put 0.75L of oil in to top it up.
Posted Sep 2, 2010 (14 years ago)