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Repairing The Engine Hood Latch In A Gallardo
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Recently I had a simple yet difficult problem with my Gallardo. I simply could not open the engine hood. When I pulled on the lever behind the passenger seat it was stuck. I simply would not release the hood latch (fig 1) over the engine. This latch is controlled by a cable that runs along the left hand side of the car and comes in behind the drivers seat. After much poking around under the car with a mirror and screwdriver I managed to release the lever that holds the hood closed and was able to discover the cause of the problem. |
| Figure 1. Gallardo Engine Hood Latch |
- The Solution
- To solve this problem I had to remove the latch from the car. This is done by opening the 4 screws that attach it to the cars frame with an Allen wrench (fig 2). Figure 3 shows the cause of the problem. For the leaver to open the latch is pulled by a cable that is attached to it on a horizontal bar support with a spring. This support is held in position by a clip shown by the pointer in figure 3.
The problem is this clip is somewhat weak and can pop out allowing the cable release to loose contact with the lever. There is a small ball at the end of the cable that catches the opening lever. In figure 3 it cannot even be seen! We need a way to make sure this does not happen. The easy solution is to attach a stronger metal brace as shown in fig 4. Now the retaining clip cannot pop out and the ball at the end of the cable is held in place (see figure 4, upper pointer). One screw is all that is needed to hold this small piece of aluminum in position (figure 4, lower pointer) Figure 5 gives a side view of this arrangement.
Of course when done before reattaching the assembly to the car frame you should spray the aluminum black.
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This very simple modification could save you needless frustration if you need to open the engine hood while on the road. It was quite difficult to get the hood open without the cable being attached properly. |
