MX-3.com

looks good and fairly easy

sweet thanks for the replies everyone

I just did this on my car today. I picked up a pair of Mitsubishi 3000GT hood support struts. The MX-3 hood was light enough and the support struts strong enough that I only used one of them. Will start there and see how it does.

I will try to get some pictures posted here but in the meantime I have them up at http://mx3.badkarma.org

Kuromu, man. You beat me to this by a day. Ha, I grabbed a pair of 01 Corolla hood struts and mounted both of them (My hood was sitting crooked with only one. I'll thow up some pics a little later. Also if I were you I'd try mounting the strut on the inside of the bracket you made, it should flex less as the force of the strut would be directly over the bolts.

edit: Also, if you're thinking about trying it with a CF hood I'd be very careful. You'll need a very low pressure strut. The Corolla ones I got are a little too heavy duty for a stock hood (Corollas' hoods must have another 10 pounds on em), takes some effort to start closing it, but lifts own. I think if you put that much pressure on fiberglass you'd crack it easily.

I had tried the inside of the bracket first, actually. I had mounted it on the outside to see if it made any difference eliminating the strut angling inward when closing. It made none. It has already been switched back. Pictures just happened to come first.

I have some heavier duty stainless angle bar coming in for the new bracket. The aluminim I used is just a little too thin and I figured polished stainless would look nicer. Going to replace the bracket for both ends with polished stainless and will probably be mounting up the second strut because as you have said, the other side droops a bit. It drooped a bit with the stock support, but it does not make me like it any better.

Yea, SS would look good. I'm usually too impatient to source something like that if I don't have it sitting around. I just used some galvanized corner braces from home hardware, the biggest I could find, and cut em down to about an inch, shaped em a little bit them coated them with about 5 to 6 layers of low gloss black.

Ok here's some pics, excuse the crappiness of the close-ups, my digital camera went for a s--- so I had to use my cellphone.

Oooh, I like your positioning better. Rock on.