Mopowers' 66 Dart Build

fstfish66 said

looks great,,,,thats next on my list ,,smooth out the fire wall

QUESTION how did you arrive at the location to mount the brackets for the hood shocks,,,,,i have been wondering what it would look like,,,i did it on the trunk lid of my street rod,,and ide like to do it on my cuda,,,same hood as your sorta,,,

Click to expand...

We measured the expanded and collapsed length of the strut. I think it was like 19" and 13 1/2". I measured from the front lip of the hood to the ground before we took the old springs off, just to make sure I can arrive at the same lift with the struts. Then I cut a 2 x 4 to keep the hood at that point while we popped the springs off and drilled out the spotwelds on the brackets. After making the brackets to mount the struts, I bolted them to the struts and sort of eyeballed where they should go, making sure they were straight when looking at them from the front of the car. Then I marked them with a sharpie. Then I closed the hood and measured the sharpie marks to make sure there would be enough travel to keep the struts from binding (made sure the m easurement was more than 13 1/2").

If you think about it, there is a ton of variability with where to mount them. Without being an engineer, I kind of resorted to this trial and error. Luckily we nailed it on the first try and they work flawlessly. If fact, the hood opens within 1/4" of where it did before the swap.

Fstfish66: Do you have any pictures of your trunk with the struts? I was thinking about doing the same with my trunk.