I'm tidying up under the hood and want to take off the hood lock mechanism for cleaning, plating.
I've unbolted it from the cross member and released the pull wire from the latch (breaking the small brittle plastic clip ), but there is no way in hell I can get the cable outer and plastic piece out of its mounting hole in the lock??

Any ideas, anyone??

 

OK, I had another crack at getting this cable and plastic mounting piece off the hood lock assembly.
What a pain in the ***! It is free enough to be loose in the hole but wont come out. Looks like it is meant to slide out sideways? but I'd have to use my superpowers to get it out, and I recon it will break the plastic 'ferrule' the outer cable sits in.
I checked the fisher manual and it just gives a very brief paragraph on removal of the lock assy, not very detailed.

Anyone have an idea or done this before? is there a trick or something I'm missing here?

Any replies appreciated.