RussWhite
08-09-2011, 06:13 PM
Well it was getting increasingly difficult to lift the engine cover to display my shiny Detroit 60 with chrome accents - Ha! Those pesky gas spring struts that are so wonderful when new, don't seem to have a real long life in my experience. I have replaced them on cars and boats and on and on.
In this application there are four in parallel and I just needed a little more help from them and decided to just start by replacing one of them. To give myself a little better chance of success with that approach I purchased one with slightly more spring pressure than the original I was replacing.
I ordered mine from R and P Carriages.com based on price. Shipped to me strut P/N SDP-GSNI-3100-200 cost thirty dollars. The last part of the P/N is the spring strength in pounds. That is one stiff spring and very hard to compress.
Unfortunately for me, the designers chose to use springs that were longer than the full open condition of the cover so a strut cannot be installed without compressing it somewhat. As you can see in my pictures, I moved the cover stop to the extremem open position and pushed the cover up as far as possible without contacting the fiberglass rear cap. Still, not enough, but much closer.
I managed to compress the spring and do the install with a very long 2x4 on edge and a lot of effort and failed attempts. There has to be a better way, I just didn't figure it out.
The cover goes up and down nicely now, so at leaast that part was a success. Be careful on this one, the spring can store a lot of energy and release it quickly.
Russ
In this application there are four in parallel and I just needed a little more help from them and decided to just start by replacing one of them. To give myself a little better chance of success with that approach I purchased one with slightly more spring pressure than the original I was replacing.
I ordered mine from R and P Carriages.com based on price. Shipped to me strut P/N SDP-GSNI-3100-200 cost thirty dollars. The last part of the P/N is the spring strength in pounds. That is one stiff spring and very hard to compress.
Unfortunately for me, the designers chose to use springs that were longer than the full open condition of the cover so a strut cannot be installed without compressing it somewhat. As you can see in my pictures, I moved the cover stop to the extremem open position and pushed the cover up as far as possible without contacting the fiberglass rear cap. Still, not enough, but much closer.
I managed to compress the spring and do the install with a very long 2x4 on edge and a lot of effort and failed attempts. There has to be a better way, I just didn't figure it out.
The cover goes up and down nicely now, so at leaast that part was a success. Be careful on this one, the spring can store a lot of energy and release it quickly.
Russ