sbyrne

Finally got my new toy home (long story for another time) and I'm working on the easy end of the "to do" list. Had a couple of extra minutes this evening, so I thought I'd throw the new hood shocks on. No trouble getting the old ones off, but the new (Weltmeister "lifetime") units are just a bit too long to pop right in and won't compress at all by hand. The hood won't open far enough to line up the mounting points without the struts being compressed at least a half inch. What's the next step? BTW, the struts came from Performance Products loose - no plastic, no box (other than the shipping box), no instructions, no factory looking wrapping at all. Is that normal?

Techno Duck

You really need to put all your body weight onto the struts to get them to compress. The ClarksGarage write up on this is pretty good,

http://www.clarks-garage.com/shop-manual/body-19.htm

It helps to have a person help you hold the hood up. Just make sure to instruct them to not let the edges of the hood touch the windshield or you can crack it.

Calmchaos

i just did this
I kinda leaned my weight on the front quarter panel and put my shoulder under the hood and just pushed up to raise the hood long enough to get the pin in. After you get the pin in the weight just compresses it.
But yeah... just don't break the windshield... it's an expensive lil sucker

docwyte

I just installed a set of hood shocks from Paragon last night. I set in the top part first, then pushed the hood up as hard as I could with my left arm/shoulder until I could snap the bottom part on.

sbyrne

The "shoulder under the hood" trick worked on the passenger side. Driver's side popped right in. Fairly large difference between the two, despite no evidence of crash damage. Thanks for the help, guys.