Can't Open Trunk
 

91 C2 Targa. The trunk (front hood) will not open. The cable is still attached to the handle. The handle pulls back fine. The hood is still down tight. It worked an hour ago, when I put the groceries in the trunk. Any ideas?
Thanks in Advance

trunk
 

Chances are some of the groceries have wedged between the trunk floor and the hood. Have someone push down on the hood (at the emblem) while you pull on the release mechanism. Let me know if this helps. Dan

The milk is gonna start smelling really bad after a couple days.

Blue might be on to something. If having a helper push down on the hood while you pull the handle doesn't work: Try a few "sudden acceleration" manuvers to force the contents to the back of the trunk, and see if that gets you anywhere.

Still no go, the handle still doesn't "catch" anything. I am wondering of the cable has let loose at the latch end. If that is the case how do you get in?

The same thing happened to me and unfortunately I don't have a good suggestion.

In my case, I had the front bumper off at the time. I ended up having to cut a small hole in the front body panel (behind the bumper just below the hood latch) and then reach in and jimmy the hood open. Once I replaced the front bumper, the hole was totally covered up (the car was a 69 in rough shape, so it wasn't so bad). There is section in the Haynes manual that tells you about drilling a hole I think in the hood (can't remember)--I relate this because unfortunately, I think you might be screwed since I can't imagine why they would offer this solution if there was something else.

By the way, in my case the cable had NOT broken, but the hood had become misaligned and the friction was keeping the latch stuck. It happened again about a year later and I just took a crowbar with some padding and wiggled/pulled up real hard--it came open. Again, I can't recommend either approach for a nice car.

One final thought. I suspect that if your cable had broken it would pull out pretty far at the door jamb. Maybe you have a jam like I did. My only constructive advice is to go look at another 911 of the same vintage and figure out what would happen if cable broke (i.e., how far would it pull out). If the latch is just stuck, you might get it open with brute force. Also, somewhere I saw an article about fitting your 911 with dual cables, one that goes to the headlight bucket. When you finally get your hood open you might want to look into that.

Good luck...

I got in. Unbolted the handle from the side of the foot well took up enough slack to open the latch. Tigntened the cable a little and it seems fine. Bolting the handle back was an adventure. Thanks to everyone.

what did you groceries look like?

The tuna salad was a little rough, the hamburger buns made it however.