Topic: Trunk Latch Spring?????

[Corey Bowcutt]

I disassembled the trunk latch on my 64.5 May Dearborn car and am confused by a spring that was attached.  The latch is clearly not an original latch.  The spring has a very home made hook/extension added to it.  I looked in the Assembly Manual and see no reference to this spring at all.  Should there be a spring attached to this tab on the latch? If not any theories as to why the PO would add such a thing?

Thank you,

Corey

[carlite65]

definitely not factory. only one reason i can think of for it to be there is someone may have had a remote trunk release installed....any remnants of that. any holes leftover anywhere?

[Corey Bowcutt]

Thank you.  I was guessing it should not be there.  No there is no evidence of any extra holes at all.

So there should be nothing attached to this tab correct?

Corey

[CharlesTurner]

The latch is not original either, looks like a reproduction.

[J_Speegle]

The latch is not original either, looks like a reproduction.

+1  Plus it looks like the internal spring broke so someone added the exterior spring to make things work again

[Bossbill]

I know exactly why they did this as I'm doing something similar on my modified car.
The L to which the spring is attached on the latch is probably for the optional interior lever style trunk release.

If you use a bowden cable that is attached to either a lever, like the optional interior lever style, or a pull solenoid you have the issue of stretching/breaking the cable or pulling the cable through its mounting clip. This is because it's hard to figure out how to build a stop or adjust the cable length just short of when the latch stop comes into play. If you don't build in a cable stop you will continue to pull on the L shaped pull built into the trunk latch, bending it, breaking the cable or pulling the cable sheath loose from its mount.

Instead, you could opt for an inline spring so that as the trunk latch hits the built in latch stop the spring will stretch instead of breaking or bending things.

I'm using a 40 pound pull solenoid so I had to design a very accurate way of adjusting things to prevent damage.