We recently had a car turn up with a small issue - the bonnet couldn't be opened. Pulling the lever in the car didn't work, but eventually with some suitably soft plastic pry bars it was encouraged to pop up off the catches.
The left hand side was fine, other than being slightly out of adjustment.
The right hand side was... less fine. Someone had made a thin steel 'cover' to hold the catch together, plus various bits of wire and some extra springs to try and get some semblance of correct operation. But it was too far gone.
We removed the catch from the car, removed the cover and the casting just fell apart.
Fortunately, we've had new ones machined, and with a little fettling to get the fit right (the internals were a bit tight in the casing) we could screw on the new catch assembly and it worked immediately. Customer was very pleased!
