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GarageXTi Hood Strut Install

Written by Ben Broughton

Saturday, 15 March 2008

Page 4 of 5

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Here comes the only tricky part of the install, and why it’s really best to do with two people.

The hood struts were designed to hold the hood up higher than what the factory prop rod does. This means it won’t help you hold the hood up for this part of the install.

Have a friend stand in front of the car, remove the prop rod and store it, and then extend the hood a few inches higher than standard raised height. Stand on the side of the car near the hood hinge and rotate the strut out from the engine bay and up near the aluminum block (it will rotate freely up toward the hinge fairly easily). Rotate the ball socket assembly so that the threads of the stud are in line with the threads of the aluminum block.

Now you can use your hand on the top of the hood and help your friend find the right height to hold the hood for threading the ball stud into the aluminum block. You want to make sure the alignment between the ball stud and the aluminum block’s thread is close, as this will make it possible to thread the stud almost entirely by hand (small adjustments of the hood height will make this possible). Again, some threadlocker on this ball stud is a decent idea. Removing the safety clip in the ball socket may also help when trying to screw the ball stud in by hand.

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Now take the 11mm wrench and completely tighten the ball stud so that it bottoms out on the aluminum block. As you can see from the pic above, getting an 11mm wrench in there is a bit of a tight fit (you can remove the exterior ball socket clip for a bit more clearance). You can also see from these pictures what metal wrenches did to my hood hinge paint from all of the hood strut testing. You may want to wrap your wrenches in tape or take extra care during this step if you don’t want to do a bunch of touch-up work.

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A ½ of a grunt is fine here on torque – it’s a small stud in aluminum threads, so you don’t want to go gorilla on it.

Congrats! You are done with one side!

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