Ever since I bought my '03 five years ago, I've been looking for a pair of nitrogen-filled struts to open the front hood and eliminate that cheap looking prop. Finally found them recently on EBay. For about $60 these Chinese made struts actually fit well and work great. I lift the hood about twelve inches and the struts gently take it the rest of the way up. Final opening height is the same as with the OEM prop.

Installation is not difficult. Some minor grinding of the OEM hinges is necessary where the strut adapters are bolted to get the adapter to seat completely. I used a Dremmel - took 2 minutes. Total install time was less than 30 minutes. It took longer than that to decipher the directions, and probably would have gone faster with out them. The translation to English seems to be OK until you try to correlate the directions with the illustrations, and you'd swear they sent the wrong set. If anyone is interested, PM me and I'll send you proper installation directions.

 

sokie tech?