6.1 Hemi 69 Barracuda Fastback Father Son Project
I've been asked about my hinge conversion by a number of folks lately so I am recapping it here.
They only need to lift about 3.5" from hood down to hood fully opened.
I installed them fully extended with the hood propped all the way open.
Landed the bottom brackets where they happened to be.
With the hood down the struts are still partially extended... not fully compressed.
The specs below are from the seller.
View attachment 1715377489
Have since switched out the struts to 220 lb. struts.
Since my original strut install used 15" fully extended struts, extended the length of these by 1 inch, so I would not have to change the bottom mounting location and still have the hood open all the way.
I added one of these per strut
Plus one of these per strut, made my 220 lb. 14" struts into 15" struts. Easy Peasy.
If you are seeing this for the first time, here is the rest of the hardware I used.
These for the bottom mount, Through bolted in both directions. No self tapping sheet metal screws here.
There is a lot of force load on these constantly... Screws would eventually loosen or worse, tear out.
These for the top, using the hole where I drilled out the factory rivet.
Looks like this now. Quiet. Smooth. No deflection. Opens nice. Closes nice.
Button Head, Allen socket, Machine screws with nuts and lock washers in the corner, in both directions.
The bottom mount is very solid here. No flexing. No worries.
Grease the **** out of your existing hinge springs, if you haven't already tried that...
One of my original springs broke.
You don't want to be close to one when it lets go!