Has anyone ever replaced their hood prop? On Monday I gave a guy at work a jumpstart, and as I was putting my cables back in my trunk he repaid me by trying to close my hood without removing the prop. As a result he bent up the driver's side rear corner of my hood, and my prop is loose and bent. I'm going to order a new prop and grommet, but I wanted to see if there is anything else I need before I get started. If you have experience with such things, I'd appreciate any advice you can give me. Thank you in advance.

 

i don't have experience replacing the hood prop, but same thing happened to the car i have. The hood is a little higher on the drivers side then the passenger side.

But i was thinking, has any body fitted gas struts like that on the hatch to fit onto the hood. Like on bmw's, accords, etc.

 

That's one of my "to-do's".
I have some struts left over from my GF's Turbo Supra.

 

I've wanted to do that for a while on my car but just never got around to taking it into a shop for an estimate... I've also wanted to have a light added to illuminate the engine comparment when the hood is open and have a switch to turn that off in case the hood is going to be opened for an extended period of time...

 

Great minds think alike. I've even aquired the lights for the hood.
You don't need a shop to do thegas strut mod. Just have to find the correct ones to use.

I don't like working on my car unless the hood can be perpendicular to the ground. that meay be difficult to accomplish with gas struts. Especially since they will have to angle towards the front of the car along the fenders.

 

I'm hesitant to do it myself because I wouldn't want to drill into the hood and fender then find out the position is slightly off or whatever... and I've never worked w/ gas struts before.. i figure if I get a shop to install it or weld some mounts or whatever and get the positioning correct.. when they do go out/get weak.. I can do the replacement myself..

the light wouldn't be a biggie though.. just a fused connection and relay, pin switch, and an additional override switch inside so I can turn it off but still have the hood open w/o killing my battery...

if you ever do it.. can you post pix, measure the distances on where the mounts should be and the part number of the struts? I'm putting my car in the shop (shave wing, fill emblem holes, clear some dents/door dings, etc) in september.. so maybe I'll ask the shop how much it would cost then...