Cookware Center

When you pull the hood release lever in your vehicle, you are pulling on a cable, just like the brake or shift cables on a bicycle.  When the vehicle gets older, and you are beneath the hood each week to add oil, the cable will at last wear out and break.  So how do you get the hood open without the cable?  My experience was with a 1991 Chevrolet S10 Blazer, but the technique I employed may be applicable to other vehicles.

The only tools required are a set of pliers, a good work light, and a lot of heavy aluminum wire.  The aluminum wire is regarding twice the thickness of spaghetti, and the stuff I employed was 8 gage aluminum ground wire from Radio Shack.  The vantage of aluminum is that it is soft sufficient to work like a string, but stiff sufficient to give rise to a hook.  It likewise is effortlessly workable with your fingers.  If you don’t have that, a coat hanger may do.

Set the work light down low so that it shines up through the grill at your latch.  In the case of my Blazer, all I could see was the metal casing for the latch.  No share of the mechanism was visible.  Here is where a mental picture becomes important.  The cable provides a pulling action.  You must hook your aluminum wire close to where the cable connects to the mechanism, and then pull in a direction as close to that of the cable as possible.  If you don’t recognise what the mechanism looks like, undertake and find a picture, or find a similar vehicle and closely question or examine it is mechanism.

In the case of the Blazer, the business end of the cable connects near the front-center percentage of the case that encloses the mechanism.  Make a hook by bending the last 1/4 inch of the wire at a 90 degree angle with the pliers.  The aluminum wire may be bent very effortlessly with your bare hands into as numerous compound angles as necessitated to make a tool that will reach the end of the mechanism.

It took me in regards to 10 minutes and when it comes to four tries pulling to at long last hook the mechanism.  When you think that you have it, implement a lot of downward pressure to the top of the hood.  This will compress the latch spring, and hopefully take some pressure off of the mechanism so that it opens easily.  Then, pull regularly on your wire.  If you have hooked the mechanism, you will feel it give as the latch operates, and then you may stop pushing down on the hood, and undertake to lift it up.

Once you get it open, you may replace the latch cable.  This may be pricey and time consuming, so if you don’t care in regards to how it looks, you may run the aluminum wire out through the grill as a new hood release.  In my Blazer, I ran a double length, and then bent it in half at the loop on the mechanism, so I have a double-strength pull.  The softness of the aluminum is what allows this to work.

Finally, be sure to grease your latch mechanism well, and also the spring latch on the hood, so that the latch will open as without apparent effort as possible.  The hood may have rubber leveling feet at each of it is corners.  If you let these out too far, it will make for a nice, stable hood, but it will put too much pressure on the latch, making it difficult to open, and leading to untimely cable failure.

Popular Aluminum Pressure Pic

Popular Aluminum Pressure Picture

Popular Aluminum Pressure Picture

Most helpful customer reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful.
A cooker for every day use
By P. Sinha
It is a good pressure cooker. The only problem which I faced with it was that it is somewhat difficult to fit the lid of the cooker. However once you get to know how to do it, it is not that tough. Also in comparison with other brands, I found the cooker to be a bit small for 2 liters. Other than that it is a very good option for every day use. I am a student and I usually prepare vegetables and rice in it and it does the job pretty well and quickly. It is recommended to use the cooker on a low flame. The packaging of the cooker was also good and it arrived on time. I would recommend this to the people who are looking for a decent pressure cooker in a limited budget for every day usage.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful.
Hooray for Prestige Indian pressure cookers!
By L. Walz
I am a European American vegetarian who does a lot of Indian cooking. I had heard about the “whistling pressure cookers” of India and was intrigued. I liked the idea that instead of watching a clock, keeping track of the progress of your recipe was a more informal system of counting whistles – a great thing for we tired, harried multitask-ers. I didn’t want to spend a whole lot of money to find out if I liked them, so I tried this dear little Prestige 4 liter aluminum cooker at an economical Amazon reseller price. I love it! It makes even complex recipes very simple and fast, and for we vegetarians, the cooking of beans and pulses is now effortless and quick. I load it, seal the lid, and let the dear little thing hiss at intervals, which I can keep track of while I am doing something else. Well, I had been expecting a whistle, but mine lets go with this wonderful “Old Faithful” style HISS! No waiting: releasing the pressure is so easy, because all you have to do is put a spoon under the weight that fits on the spout, and it is safely gone in seconds and you can open the lid. Opening and closing it is very easy. I have full confidence in its safety. If the food is not cooked to your expectations, you put the lid back on, fire it up again, and let it go a few more whistles/hisses. I do find that my meals tend to require a couple more hisses than the recipes call for, so I wonder if the pressure is not as intense as in some other models, but that it is a minor issue. It is easy to clean and maintain as well. Excellent design – simplicity itself! It’s up there with my Cuisinart as beloved kitchen tools. No matter how tired I am, I can toss a few things in, and have a delicious, nutritious fresh meal in less time than a microwave. Having fallen in love with Prestige Indian pressure cookers, which I use for all kinds of recipes now, I will be investing in a larger Prestige stainless steel one for when I cook for guests too. In the time it took me to write this review, my dear little Prestige 4 liter aluminum pressure cooker prepared me a restaurant quality dinner. Enthusiastically recommended. Thank you, India, for your wonderful whistling/hissing pressure cookers!

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful.
Excellent product
By Vamsi
Pressure cooker became a part of Indian kitchen long ago and ever since I moved to US on a temporary assignment, I was missing this product. I couldn’t find many Indian stores sell pressure cookers, that too of Prestige at this cost. Though there are pressure cookers from Hawkins, I felt that the lid arrangements (which involved inserting the circular lid “inside” the base) on those cookers felt more cumbersome.
Prestige lids are very easy to use; opening and closing them is as simple as opening/closing a bottle.

Nothing less than a high-five for this product.

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