Bonnet and boot gas struts

[craigvk]

Anyone installed bonnet and gas struts? I'm thinking about doing it especially the boot. Dang VK's boot banging you on the head when the car is on a >10 degree slope.

Where to buy? I have seen ebay sellers having them for sale for about $30.

[nighttraintc88]

its a fairly easy job, go to super cheap and buy a set of universal struts and start buy using the first bolt to the front of car on bonnet hinge. replace it with the bolt that has a pivot ball on it (with strut) then lift bonnet to the hieght u wont when open mark hole for set mounting bolt on strut and drill and bolt together(make sure the gas strut fits in before drilling with bonnet closed.

http://cgi.ebay.com.au/ws/eBayISAPI....m=110036693870

[vkberlina]

I worked out how to do mine by weighing the pivot weight of my bonnet & measuring the required struct length and bought struts from my local strut guy.
For the bonnet you need 2x 150N struts, I forget the length but I can measure mine if you want.

As for the boot, I havent put enough thought into mine yet. The problem is finding a suitable mounting location that will allow the boot lid to close properly. I had a couple of goes on a VK wreak I had with a 90N strut I had without success.
Instead what I am running is 2 springs attached to the boot hinges to brackets off the rear quarters below the boot lip. I can post pictures if your interested.

cheers
Scott

[vh-holden]

with the boot, could you attach it to the hinge and extend back to the parcel shelf? like the setup on newer commodores.

[Demons1964]

with the boot, could you attach it to the hinge and extend back to the parcel shelf? like the setup on newer commodores.

I like your thinking but I imagine mods to the parcel shelf would require an engineers certificate.

Slim, maybe I've got a rare one, but when I pop the boot lock on any slope on my VC it rises to attention like the early morning todger. Maybe the extra trim on the VK boot is enough to upset the weight balance.

I bought my bonnet struts off ebay a while back, about $30. I did a trial fitment and it was a boltup fit, in storage now waiting for the full rebuild. From memory they are identical to the tailgate struts from VB-VL wagons.

Mark.

[Cane_It]

theres a bloke on the brock commodores forum that mentioned it in HDT discussion and included a pic on how he mounted the boot strut...

Scott,
Ive seen the helper springs you described on a couple of brocks, it works but i think its a bandaid solution and the strut looked much more professional and easy to install.

[vkberlina]

Yeah I saw his install it looks tops, great paintjob on his boot, I tried mounting one there in my test car and I coulnt get it to work properly.
When the boot was closed it made it sit funny. maybe my strut was too long or somethign


cheers
Scott