Chevy & GMC Vans

Thanx again to the fellow who'd posted this subject originally. Anyhoo///

I bought myself a coupla struts at Canadian Tire using measurements taken from my 06' Charger. One thing I realized off the bat was that I was gonna have to be careful as to where I placed the struts. You see, if I placed the struts too far towards the front of the hood, I'd have to apply too much force to close the hood. If I placed 'em too far back, the struts wouldn't have enuf leverage to lift/keep the hood open.


The first pic is of the Allen head bolt which I rounded off to act as a ball head swivel joint for the strut.




The 2nd pic is of one of said bolts installed on the fender.



3rd pic is of another bolt installed on the hood hinge



4th pic is of the strut installed. I did one side and gauged the holding capacity/strength before going ahead and installing the other strut.




Finally, the hood being gloriously held open by the force of two struts.




Issues. First of all, the ball-head installed on the fender wasn't quite high enuf, so the rear part of the hood wouldn't sit down quite as low as it shoulda. Raising the bolthead height took care of that problem. Do NOT slam the hood shut when doing this the 1st time. Otherwise, you may kink the hood.
2nd issue is with the rubber gasket which can no longer be attached at the extreme ends due to the strut heads on the hood hinge. Simply cut about an inch off of the gasket and redrill the hood to hold the gasket in place . Voila!

Is that a zip tie holding your blower motor in place??

Looks good, Peter. I've kicked around the idea of doing something like that for my beast.
Hey, Justice, at least he used a black tie-wrap on the blower motor!

LOLOL, yes & no. The ziptie is there to keep the edges from looking uneven. As I'm sure you're aware, GM has you cutting the original motor outta the housing. When you reinstall the replacement motor, you end up with a coupla edges out of sync.

peter wrote:LOLOL, yes & no. The ziptie is there to keep the edges from looking uneven. As I'm sure you're aware, GM has you cutting the original motor outta the housing. When you reinstall the replacement motor, you end up with a coupla edges out of sync.

Cutting? hmmm :-k mine had 5 7mm self tapping screws holding it in... no cutting involved...

Peter, I am definitely looking forward to checking out this mod when we get to NECO. I'd love to do away with the hood prop rod on my '89.

What sized struts did you use?

Peter,

Could you give measurements for the placement of the pivot bolts? This is an awesome mod! I have been trying to brain storm about how to replace the prop rod as it will be necessary to remove it later this summer when I do the ram air setup.

Thank You! Thank You! Thank You!

I don't know if I would have thought of this very obvious solution, and would have tried something more complex.

DV

The idea wasn't mine. Someone else did it before on their pre-95' and had posted pics. As well, they have the struts angled opposite of mine. In other words, their strut bottom bolts to the fender close to the hinge and points up and outwards towards the front. I did it differently because I was worried about fit.
I'll take pics and measurements later and post 'em.

I took a peak at my '94 metro. The rear liftgate (hatch back) has struts. I think they would be about the right size and if you went to a bone yard you could grab both the ball pivot that is on the body and the bracket with ball pivot on the hatch itself.

I will try to take these off my metro and install them later in July when I get time, and report back.

I had the opportunity to check out Peter's Safari while at NECO '07 and quizzed him about the struts he used on his Safari's hood. I couldn't find a part number on either strut, and like Peter states above, he used the struts on his Charger as a guide to get those for his van. The car parts place he went to had a display board of the struts available and he chose the struts from that.
Here's a drawing he made for me of the strut's dimensions.
Note that the strut as drawn is fully extended and that neither end fastening point is included in the lengths given.

MODERATOR, PLEASE INTERVENE HERE!


I have never given permission to Rob to post the above pic. This is a flagrant violation of copyright law.
Please govern yourself accordingly, lest you and this site be served with a lawsuit in the millions of $$$$.

Ahh.... wos up Smurfy?...... someone copying your patented design......?

Allow me to defend myself. You see, it was a drawing by a nice guy Peter, who wanted me to post the drawing, not the nasty one who posted above, who is obviously his evil twin and should be run out of here.
Case closed!
Begone Evil Twin, fie upon thee!

I checked out the strut offerings at Autozone today. It appears that the struts are manufactured by Arvin Meritor (website http://www.arvinmeritor.com ). I quickly checked out the site, but didn't find the specs of the various sized hood struts. Would've been nice to see info like open/closed lengths and support weight.

rob.. check out the monroe site.

http://www.monroe.com/catalog_lookup/oc ... ppinfo.asp

Gas Charged Lift Support Mounting "Style and Dimension" Sheet is the PDF file that you want to check out. It lists all the ones they make. By end (fitting) type and compressed and uncompressed length as well as travel.