Forever closed trunk ?

Here's a shot of the hole i drilled. Actually two holes but the bottom one did prove to be of help with lighting. They both hide behind my plate.

And heres one of the screwdriver through the hole and to the latch.

R.O.B.O. said:

I was able to open the engine lid and insert a nylon wedge

Click to expand...

R.O.B.O., that's a good idea. I didn't see this until now and got my trunk open using the drill technique.

RulerofEarth, thank you for helping me get into my trunk.

Quick background: My 1987 was stored uncovered in the mountains for 6 years and squirrels/mice/bobcats/et cetera chewed on my rear trunk cable housing rendering the trunk release latch inoperable. The key has always worked, and since rebuilding my car in 2010, I've just been using my key to access the rear trunk.

Fast forward to the present and the trunk lock has been getting harder and harder to use. I've been needing to spray it with some graphite but didn't do so until it got to the point that I thought the key would break off.

After the graphite spray the lock turned great, BUT, the key no longer operated the latch! I couldn't figure out why / what had happened. My best guess was that the latch inside had fallen off of the lock cylinder so I was screwed: Key no longer worked; Cable doesn't work.

RulerofEarth's description was vague but after some patience I got the trunk opened.

With the trunk opened it turned out that the lock cylinder broke internally. The key rotates just fine but the latch on the inside doesn't move. Does this mean that it's stuck in the valet mode or will I need to repair or replace the lock cylinder? I have no idea how many hands this car passed through before I bought it Jan 31, 1999, so I don't know if my key is the master key. It's the only key I've ever had and it fits everything including my glove box.

I didn't really understand what the qtr circle cw rotation would do until I got it opened up. I removed my latch and cleaned it up and took some pics to illustrate what you want to do.

Step 1: If you drill at the top center of your license plate line, you'll screwdriver will likely hit the latch just to the left of where you need to be. My advice is to drill maybe half an inch to the right of center. Here is where my screwdriver made its first contact. I was stuck here for at least 10 minutes wiggling, rotating, pressing, leaning, while pulling up and down on the trunk lid:


Step 2: While I was wiggling around and around, finally I felt the screwdriver get caught in a groove somewhere. This is the groove you want the screwdriver to fall into:


Step 3: With the screwdriver in this groove, you want to rotate the blade of your screwdriver 90-degrees to spread the latch apart as shown:


Step 4: Once the latch has been spread apart, you simply need to lean the screwdriver blade up the groove a bit and pull the screwdriver out. Once pressure is removed from the screwdriver or the screwdriver is removed and out of the way, the latch will snap apart as shown:


I had the screwdriver in the groove numerous times, but I still didn't know what I was doing. I kept rotating and rotating, leaning and moving it all around and the trunk was still locked. Then as I was about to give up I let go of the screwdriver and the latch suddenly clicked and unlocked the trunk.

So I probably had the latch unlocked numerous times (stuck between steps 3 & 4) but never knew it and probably re-engaged the lock a few times. It wasn't until I removed the screwdriver (step 4) when the trunk finally clicked and became unlocked.

Hope this info helps future trunk openers!!

Regards,
BigMike