Quote:
Originally Posted by Impureclient
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Okay, I'll bite.
Despite the belittling and insulting post I'd like to educate you a little bit so maybe you won't do the same thing to someone else.
You've done an excellent job identifying two main components of a hood spring system, which is a start. So you buy these 2001 Camry gas springs and this set of generic set of mounts. DONE! Just got yourself a hoodstrut kit for $100 less than we sell it for. Man, we must be absolute THIEVES!
So you go and mount it. But how do you do that? I see you got two right angle mounts, that's good. But you needed four. Luckily you're very clever and have some scrap angle iron around to make one of the flat mounts into a right angle mount. Brilliant! Also, you had to cut and drill those pieces of angle iron. But you already had the drill, bits, and saw, so that counts as free, right?
Good. You got brackets that will now bolt to the car. But how do you attach them? It doesn't matter, this stuff is super easy and you do not mind drilling a hole in your hood and putting some self tapping screws into your hood. No one is going to mind some randomly drilled holes, right? Since it worked so great on the hood you do the exact same thing to the chassis of the car. But you have a little class, and you notice that the crappy galvanized brackets look awful next to the paint on the car, and the angle iron mount you made is already rusty, because you know..... angle iron. But, being a complete pro like you are, you have some spare black spray paint. Spray em up, they look fantastic.
So now you have gorgeous painted hacked together brackets, secured to the hood and chassis with permanent holes you drilled and fitted with self tapping screws. You knew exactly where to put them because all you have to do is put the springs between the hood and chassis and mount them. Except you notice that the hood isn't even open as high as it used to with the prop rod, what the hell!
You got this though, nothing but big plays coming: So you just move the brackets, drill some more holes, and screw the brackets in. Now it opens ALMOST as high as the hood used to with the prop rod. Good enough, right? No, because now when you go to shut the hood not only is it insanely difficult because the spring force is WAY too high because you bought gas springs for a Camry with a steel hood. You're pulling down with all your weight and you get the hood to start moving, the brackets are flexing because they're literally not designed to do what you're trying to make them to do, and then one of the brackets shears both of it's self taping screws right off because they were not even close to the correct size for the application.
But you're still very clever, and realize that you can just use one side, that's only half the spring force. You could have gotten this job done for HALF of what you spent. Maybe you'll hook your buddies car up with the other half of your design when you're done. So now its still way too stiff, but you can at least get the hood to start closing. You get about a foot away from latching and it won't budge. The gas spring is compressed to the maximum and the hood won't close. This is now the second time you realize you can't put the brackets where ever you want.
Still being the super clever person you are, you realize that maybe you can't just use any length of gas spring either, maybe there is a specific distance that it needs to be compressed and uncompressed too. And maybe you also need to make the fixed points of that spring in specific places too. And maybe the gas springs need to be a specific spring force in able to open and close without damaging any components, but while still being able to not fall down. Then you realize just how difficult it will be to make these four variables do what you think they're going to do.
And now you're out the thirty bucks you spent, the paint, hardware, scrap, and most importantly: The time you wasted. And you still don't have a set of hood struts, but you have a bunch of sweet speed holes that you drilled in your car to remember this occasion by.
But it's no big deal, you'll make that money back ASAP working at that local massage parlor.
To everyone else, that you very much for the kind words and recommendations. I also appreciate that most of you understand that while I'd love to give away everything we make, we simply can not. Unfortunately we need to not only order and produce these parts (the extremely high quality gas springs we use are completely custom and cost us more than those camry ones for example), but we also need to pay all of our wages, our building, our everything. And we can't exactly ask our distributors to sell these for us for free either. Unfortunately I also need to survive and haven't won the lottery, and while I do enjoy a good linkage design, I also need a little money.
We also refuse to cut corners on quality. The ones you can buy for $85 on ebay or whatever have very thin brackets that flex when you articulate the hood, especially because the gas springs themselves are not the proper force. The brackets themselves are universal garbage just like what was posted, but have at least been painted (not powdercoated like ours). The gas springs themselves are the bare minimum, poorly spec'd and will not last as long as ours. And above all, they open the hood LESS than the prop rod. As stated, these are fine for a lot of people and are a great way to save some money if you don't really care about the outcome.
See, I can have fun too :P Thank you again everyone, it still makes me very very happy to this day to see people recommending our hood struts. Please let me know if anyone has anymore questions, or if you'd like to go another round in hood strut 101.
Chase
Engineering