The very next day after posting about the right side being almost done, I put the other headlight and turn signal on the left side. Since then I've put in quite a few more days and alot of hours into the car and now its pretty much done. All I had left was to bleed the brake lines. I bled the driver's side, then when I went to bleed the passenger side, the bleeder nut snapped off. x_x So I replaced the caliper and when I went to bleed the line, the hood latch release busted.

Anyway, even without bleeding the line the braking felt alot better so I figured it would be best if I replaced the other side too. So I replaced the left side and messed with the hood a bit more. No luck.

Today tho, I got lucky. After fashioning a coat hanger into a crude pulling rod and inserting it at the driver's side headlight to blindly attach it to the hood release... It didn't work and I got extremely fucking pissed. After 30 minutes I said fuck it and attacked the problem from under the car. The air deflector under the hood was already broken off to begin with from a snow issue about 2 years ago, so I had access to the top portion of that piece of plastic without having to first remove that large deflector piece. Anyway, three bolts later I found out I could bend that piece of plastic towards the radiator and access the hood latch release spring thru a small access hole with a screwdriver. A couple seconds later and one quick, light push with a screwdriver, my hood pops up.

Turns out the cable did not break and the hood latch was still working. I lubricated the hell out of it so it would stop being a bitch to operate and the cable somehow got dislodged from two retaining clips on the inside of the engine compartment and another two clips from under the dash. After zip tieing those couple spots and pushing the hood release cable back into position I was able to tighten it all up and it works again.

The real bullshit was that the cable still worked. I was just afraid of breaking it when I pulled on the cable with a pair of pliers in the drivers seat. I could have saved myself quite a bit of time if I'd have just yanked the damn thing. Of course one of the little metal wires is broken on the cable so it'll probably fail on me again someday and completely snap now... but at least now I know how to pop that f*cking hood without a cable.

As of now, I have 5 bolts left to put back on the car, bleed the brake lines and go for a test drive. The car is already insured and re-registered but I still have to get it inspected.

Once I finish up the little things I'll take some new pics.