Picked up “Mighty Lift” hatch struts from Auto Zone for $19.99 a piece. They are very similar to the struts that were on there before, and came with everything you need for the install (you need to re-use your existing bolts.

Install was pretty straight-forward. You simply remove the old strut (attached with a torx-head screw on top, and two bolts at the base (under the plastic trunk lining).

We propped up the hatch with a piece of board just like the instructions said not to do. (We did, however, spot one another as we inserted our heads precariously between around the strut and in-between the hatch and the trunk.) The screw on top is easy enough to insert and tighten, but the two bolts at the bottom are a pain due to the plastic trunk liner that covers them. We popped off as many plastic tabs as we could, but we still couldn't fully remove the two pieces that were in our way. So, with them loosened, we took turns -one of us would turn the bolt while the other one held the plastic out. The plastic is fairly sharp so rather than hurt ourselves we both came up with ways of prying the plastic out instead. Sometimes you can do this with the strut intself, at other times we used a wrench or whatever was handy.

Not a difficult install at all. They're working great so far. A little stiff when closing the trunk, but I assume they'll soften up with some use.

 
hatch_struts.txt · Last modified: 2010/06/16 13:42 by 127.0.0.1
[unknown button type]
 
Except where otherwise noted, content on this wiki is licensed under the following license: CC Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 4.0 International
Recent changes RSS feed Donate Powered by PHP Valid XHTML 1.0 Valid CSS Driven by DokuWiki