I had pushed my latch rod out the back and had locked myself out of the hood. Had the latch rod fall out but managed to simply use a heavy duty metal coat hanger to go thru the hole and push the locking latch. With a couple of bends in the right place so it was in similar shape to the rod. I did raise the bucket but did not really need to. You do not have to drill any holes or cut/break the latch push area cover. It was very simple to do with the coat hanger. I tried using a solid 1/4 in rod but could not get a good bend where i needed and the clothes hanger worked great.
Here is my experience with my JD 4066m hood release which cost me $200 to fix and JD refuses to cover the cost and denies any flaw in the system. I just got off the phone with a John Deere customer response representative that told me they do not have any (many) reports of the Hood Rod becoming detached and falling in the engine compartment. I used a small screwdriver pushed in the access hole on the JD 4066 (and others) the hood opened... a day latter I attempted to access the compartment using a screw driver and there was no rod in the holder, I could see it floating around still attached to the hood release. Once that happens there is no easy way to access the engine compartment to open the hood with out removing other parts of the tractor compartment to get to it. In my case our JD dealer said they had to remove the front screen of the tractor to get access to it, then they replaced a part and put it back together for a total cost of about $200.00 the part they replaced was $19.99 and the labor was $174.00. The dealer told me that just the day before they had a 4052 with the exact situation. My tractor only has 117 hours on it... not even time for a service and because it is now 3 years old, out of warranty JD would not cover the repair (on a $40, 000 tractor). From the various posts on RU-vid and forums this obviously is an issue on the new tractors... I was told that anything after 2017 JD has been using this hood release design. I'm pissed not at the dealer but at JD for not covering my cost to have this changed and my guess it is the exact same way that it was from the factory so, the same thing could very well happen again! NOW FOR THE REAL ISSUE! My wife asked me that what would happen if this happened and I was out in the field, noticed some smoke coming out of the engine compartment or other major issue... how would I get the hood open.... Think about it folks if you had a clump of hay get in to the compartment and heat up how would you get in and put it out? There is No WAY! I told her that I guess I'd step off the tractor and watch it burn up while trying to call JD for service... this is a flaw and a real concern and everyone with a tractor with this design should think about it... Yea, someone will say, just spray water on it... OK, so it's sitting in the middle of a 100 Acre farm smoldering.... where's the water to put it out? The I brought all this up to the agent that I was speaking to... he just said he understands but was not going to reimburse the cost to us... I asked if he would escallate the concern and issue to somone that could authorize a payment... He just said now this is where it stops... I'll document the concern but JD will not authorize any reimbursement. End of discussion. So I thought I'd start here and other forums bringing this issue up... as JD does not thing its a big issue! Sorry for the rant, we have over $80,000 invested in JD equipment because I thought they cared... obviously not! The agent I spoke with didn't even do any research on the issue and had no idea how the hood release system works...I'd think he would of at least looked at a tractor to see the obvious issue.... He just was not that interested! I hope if nothing else we can spread this story on JD and tractor forums and get JD to recognize this is an issue for their customers.....
