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DIY Bonnet Gas Struts By Broken Mu

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DIY Bonnet Gas Struts By Broken Mu

Postby BrokenMu » Mon Sep 27, 2010 7:02 pm

Anyway, onto the gas struts.

You will need the following bits;

Two VT Commodore bonnet gas struts - Repco P/N: RGS14689
Two gas strut nipples - Repco P/N: MLSMP351 (you can buy these at any good bolt & nut store)
4 x Metal self drilling screws - around 20mm x 8ga
4 x guard style bolts - M8 x 30mm
4 x 8mm mud guard washers
4 x M8 nyloc nuts
2 x L shaped brackets to mount to the guard
There are a few other little bits and pieces you will need though to move the fuse box down a touch - see below.
and a second set of hands always helps.

I've chosen the VT bonnet struts as they are only around 280Nm each and wont warp my bonnet or bend my guards in. Some other cars bonnet struts can get up to the 500Nm mark.

There is a tiny amount of modification to help it all fit nicely. The first thing is the fuse box needs to be moved down about 40mm for the gas strut to clear it when the bonnet is shut. To do so, I made a small bracket (about 70mm x 35mm) out of sheet metal and drilled two holes in it 40mm apart. firstly, In the lower hole, I placed a rounded head bolt facing inwards, pushed it through the fuse box mounting hole and secured it with a nut and flat washer. In the upper hole, I bolted the original fuse box mounting bolt, securing the bracket to the engine bay.

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On the other side of the bay (this does not apply if you don't have air con) I simply moved the solid air con line behind the bracket to help the gas strut L bracket fit.

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You can see the nipple required in this photo, the other end of it is threaded.
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I was able to score a few of these L brackets from work. I work for a caravan builder and we use these on pop top caravans, the roof is supported by gas struts, so they were perfect!

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If you look under the guard lip where the original bolt is (about 4th bolt from the rear of the guard), you'll see a small lipped section, I mounted my brackets just behind this lip to ensure it had a flat mounting surface.

Before mounting the L brackets, I'd advise that you attach the nipples to them.
Once they are mounted, screw the flat side of the strut to your bonnet with self drilling screws.

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This is the optimum point of attachment to ensure that the gas struts don't bottom out on closure, the struts don't rub or foul on the inner guard lip and the bonnet opens to a decent height.

once the struts are screwed to the bonnet, clip the bottom of them to the nipples on the L brackets and you're done 8-)

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BrokenMu
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Re: DIY Bonnet Gas Struts By Broken Mu

Postby Yarno » Tue Oct 12, 2010 6:25 pm

Nice, have had my struts hanging around here for ages, needed some inspiration.
Cheers.
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