Post a video of your cool mod in operation. I was just thinking about how to do this the other day.

 

I've been contemplating it for years and never thought to connect them to the hinge itself.

I imagine one would want to beef up the hinge to use a 40lb strut.

 

First off, I am soooooooo jealous!


Now a word of caution. GT hoods are pretty weak. You now have tremendous leverage being applied to the hinge and front mounting plate of the hood as you try to close the hood. You have to size the strength of the strut to not be too strong or bendage and separation of the glued/stamped together hood seams is possible. I'll just say that and sneak away to wallow in my jealousy.

:veryhappy

 

I found that installing greasing nipples on the hinge was excellent upgrade. It kept my hood hinges in great shape all these years.
It is probably a good opportunity to repeat post on hood hinge repair and reinforcement.

 

(40 lbs extended force).

Does that mean that EACH strut needs 40lbs. of force to begin collapsing? That would be 80lbs of force applied at the hood mounting plate to begin to get the hood to close. Consider that the oem set up of the hinge/hood mounting plate encounters virtually zero pounds of force when opening and closing.

I tried this strut-to-the-hinge mod a while back, but my fiberglass hood was way too weak at the hood mounting plate to withstand that much force for very long.

 

I really like the idea of doing this, but although my hinge has been repaired and grease fittings added, it's always in the back of my mind when I open the hood that it'll break off again. :no:

 

I wouldn't try this on fiberglass hood although it would require much less force to keep it open. The GT hood is quite heavy and it requires 2x40 lbs springs. I initially tried 2x20 lbs springs and they could not hold the hood.
The GT hinges are not weak; they are just prone to seize and break-off as a consequence. Well lubricated hinges should last forever.

 

Aero style hood locks installed in 2014:
https://www.opelgt.com/forums/group-2-body-interior/55618-hood-latch-hooks.html#post650570

 

And the Batterie came out now with no problems?:thinking:

 

The over-the-top modification to this modification would be linear electric actuators.

Looks good PJ!

 

Looks like you added a piece of steel all the way across with the ears on it to hold the gas springs next to the radiator.......yes? I am not sure I could do this due to the way my electric fan is mounted and the over sized aluminum radiator I have for the fuel injection.

 

Jeff, get rid of bloody EFI and install those sexy Webers. :veryhappy

 

Cool idea. My CDO is not liking that the gas struts are not mirrored from each other. So either both struts would need to be inside the hinge, or outside the hinge. One inside and one outside....:no:

If you don't have CDO (OCD), then it won't bother you.

 

That would bug the carp out of me.

 

This is how I mounted mine. I'm using two 11lb gas springs, but my carbon fiber hood only weighs 10 lbs.

 

Yea.....about that hood. What would it take to get you to make another??

 

Do you have measurements for the mounting points and a reference point?

 

If someone made a carbon fiber hood and doors for a GT, would people actually fork up serious cash for them?

 

If someone made a carbon fiber hood and doors for a GT, would people actually fork up SERIOUS cash for them?

Get SERIOUS (pun intended), we ARE talking about GT owners! :dunno: ....:thinking: ......:sigh: .....:no: .....:bs2:

 

Finally got around to painting my carbon fiber hood. Just a quickie job in the driveway, still have to cut and buff it. Not a perfect match, but good enough since it's always up at a car show anyway. Plus I'm repainting the whole car next winter.

 

JEALOUS!

Wow, now that's a nice hood. I love the support layout and I REALLY like that it's glass smooth on the under side.

Great work as usual Ron!

:yup:

 

I was looking thru the thread and thought the same thing about putting both struts inside the hinges. I wouldn't necessarily say that stems from OCD, just...uhm...'presentation', but then when Autoholic mentioned it along with his 'CDO', I didn't even have to think about what 'CDO' is....I just knew.

BUT, I can justify the next bit..with science, even! Well, physics and engineering, that is. I have had experience with struts having a single sided ball mount. If the mount is attached to something solid, it's okay. Mounted to stamped or formed sheetmetal (like the hinge) is not a solid enough mount. The way they appear to be mounted, that 40lbs will create a twisting motion leveraging the hinge. Eventually the ball mount can/will tear out of the hinge. Compressed it has a constant 40lbs on it on one side. Open the hood and it lessens, close it, it increases, flexing back and forth. The key word is 'shear'.

At the old billboard shop we had a worktruck with a work top on it and a hinged lift gate on struts. Basically the same set up. The ball mounts were fine but it tore out of the sheetmetal of the liftgate. Bottom mounts were weak and cracked as well.

I would run a bolt thru both sides of the hinge so the ball mount has two location points. This would require the strut inside the hinge have a eye on the end, not a socket, and the bolt shank be smooth not threaded where the eye rides.

Not criticizing, just wanted to save some heartache.

 

I was looking thru the thread and thought the same thing about putting both struts inside the hinges. I wouldn't necessarily say that stems from OCD, just...uhm...'presentation', but then when Autoholic mentioned it along with his 'CDO', I didn't even have to think about what 'CDO' is....I just knew.

People who have it normally do.

The engineering side of me didn't even think about unbalanced forces. Having the hood twist each strut in opposing directions would help, as these forces can cancel each other out. Using a strut with an eye hole at the end would be better.

 

On resumes we call it 'detail oriented' and grandma was 'just fussy'.

What I see is that the side of the hinge that the strut is bolted to will twist. The strut will be fine and the hood will be fine, but where that ball mount goes thru the hinge the hinge side will deflect back and forth. Even with bolt going thru both sides of the hinge bracket, the side closest to the ball mount will still want to move back and forth. Ideally, a bolt thru both sides with a spacer between so that bolt/nut/spacer assembly could be locked down tight, no chance for play. the eye on the strut would float between the sides of the hinge or be spaced dead center with bushings.


Edit:
I see that I misunderstood what you were saying. I was thinking a bolt going thru both sides of each hinge bracket. Correct me if I am wrong, but I think I now see that you meant a really long one going thru both sides of both hinge brackets. In addition, I had missed the twist you were refering to, the hood will twist and the two hinge brackets deflect individually, one side higher than the other. Which leads me to another question, if the struts are unequal in pressure, exerting uneven force?

All this complicated engineering...it's a wonder more planes don't fall out of the sky ( I asked a friend who is an engineering manager at Boeing about that. She said she works on the military side and their planes are designed to make OTHER planes fall out of the sky....a slightly apocryphal statement)

 

On resumes we call it 'detail oriented' and grandma was 'just fussy'.

<SNIP>

All this complicated engineering...it's a wonder more planes don't fall out of the sky ( I asked a friend who is an engineering manager at Boeing about that. She said she works on the military side and their planes are designed to make OTHER planes fall out of the sky....a slightly apocryphal statement)

I have a friend that works for a different part of "Boeing" who was being "quizzed" at a party about something he was doing at work. As I also worked for (a 3rd part) of Boeing, I had an idea of what he was doing and thought he might need some "help" so I entered the fray. I was told "Bob makes things disappear"! I told them that he did not make things disappear, he simply made them "invisible" and the aircraft I worked on (the B-1B bomber) really made things DISAPPEAR (making a "poofing" motion with my hands)! Everyone laughed and the subject wandered off. Later, Bob asked me what I really worked on and when I told him that "I could neither confirm nor deny the existence or non-existence of any such program" he knew what I meant! Your friend could well be in the same business (and has a lot of similar comments in reserve)?

Doug

 

If both ends of the strut have eye holes, then the bracket would need to be designed to support both sides of the strut eye hole. The hood bracket would have the strut bolted between each side of the stamped steel. This would prevent any twisting from happening, on either end of each strut.

Using the struts already on the car... if they mirrored each other, then the way the forces from the hood act upon the struts would cancel each other out. The driver side strut would want to twist towards the driver side tire, the passenger side strut would want to twist towards the passenger side tire. Because the hood cannot move both towards the driver's side and the passenger's side at the same time, there is less chance of bending the mounting bolts and shearing them. So, aside from the CDO aspect of having the struts mounted in a mirror image orientation, there is a structural benefit.

 

First paragraph I agree. On the second, it wasn't the hood twisting the struts I was thinking of at first, it was the force/resistance in the strut leveraging the ball mount where it goes thru the metal. That is up to 40lbs pushing back and forth on the that hole drilled into a piece of sheetmetal that is not boxed. The force goes thru the ball mount trying to move it back and forth. If it moves the hole wallows out. If it doesn't, the sheetmetal flexes. With the hood closed, there is 40lbs of pressure constantly pushing on the sheetmetal trying to deflect it to the side. The operating force is not centered on the support, but offset and creating a leveraged shear stress on the sheetmetal.

Might not really matter, I am known for over engineering things.

 

I would agree with your analysis of what could happen over time due to the 40 lb force of the hood acting upon a mounting point that is not reinforced and the bracket was not designed for this purpose. An easy solution would be to fabricate a spacer to create a solid support between both sides of each hood bracket. This should minimize the bending and twisting acting upon the hood bracket every time the hood is opened or closed.

Or, leave it as is. If this winds up damaging the hood brackets, then new ones would need to be created that are stronger. At that time, any other improvements to the design could be done.

 

Okay, now that the research, analysis and development are done, who do we send the invoice to?

 

Ron, have you done any testing to know if that panel improves cooling? I've always wondered if too much air is going up and over the radiator.

 

Gas cylinder intalled.

Well it took 3 years and 20 min. to install a gas support cylinder on my GT. :haha:
John

 

Hadn't flat rate taught you anything??? Or maybe it has, took 20 minutes and charged 3 years 20 minutes.

Would you mind sharing the parts used?