Seems from your pics and description that the barrel of the strut rubs/presses on the Battery cover where it angles out to meet the ball and crosses the "Ledge". My thinking is to move the fender balls in toward the center and possible raise them so the barrel lays down parallel to the ledge and inside it. A pair of these ball plates are only $2 so it's worth a shot. Ryan may want to duplicate if it provides an interference free soluion. More soon!

:iagree: The lower mounting point may need to be raised too. Like the lower bracket does on my 350Z CTD dampers.

Modshack- sounds good!

The 350Z's damper setup looks like my G's damper setup. The dampers are much shorter and more inline with the fender line.

The one thing I couldn't overcome was just the physical size of the damper housing. Meaning you can lay it flat on the battery cover with the shaft end disconnected and it still rubs. One of the first things I tried when it first bottomed out. So decided it might be easier just to lower the battery cover surround piece because it is literally a stackup issue. (Well, in my case).

Hope your braket works out! :D

Interesting. When I first saw the size of the dampers I wondered how they would filt under the hood. There isn't a lot of space vertically between the bottom of the hood and the battery surrond with the hood closed.

Also it seems to me that the upper and lower mounting points should be in more of a straight line.

We tried running it straight and there seems to be no way it will work! it pushed so hard the hood almost wouldnt close!

Maybe the dampers are too large then for this particular application?

to large meaning the diameter of the strut? any thinner it most likely wont hold the hood up.

but Kenchan figured it out! and our Z has no buldge :)

Ryan...Do you happen to know the spring pressure of those cylinders? They seem to be available in 10 lb force increments....

Not sure how moving the fender side ball an inch to the right/left would affect that much given the very slight change in angularity..

I will need to check tomorrow. but i dont think it will affect it at all.

off the top of my head i know its about 80+ lb pressure.

all didnt clean the hatch area before taking the pictures :stirthepot:

I meant in terms of diameter. But it could also be the spring rate or perhaps both the diameter and the spring rate. For example a smaller diameter strut with the same or a lesser spring rate might work just as well if it's mounting points were more in a straight line. A smaller diameter strut would also have less likelihood of rubbing. I see Modshack has already asked about the spring rates of your struts.

Zpirate- the diameter is 19.6mm for ryan's. this is over the CF part of the housing.

The NRG i have on my G is smaller but only marginally... like 18.0mm. the car needs more like 10mm additional clearance for the dampers if it was not to rub the battery cover surround piece... there is just no room.

the structure of the 370Z is completely different from your 350Z and my G35C... there's really not much room in there~. :)

i dont think it's going to change all that much as far as the force... and honestly speaking, these are retail $99... so manufacturing cost is $25 for the pair...that's like less than $10 each for the dampers themselves. i dont expect them to be extremely accurate as far as spring pressure consistency. :icon17:

cant wait to see how you clear the battery cover side. :pics:

19.6mm (.77")...Correct. Readily available cylinders from my source are 19.1 (.75") without the CF, so little difference there. Spring rate is really not an issue here as Ryan's do the job (I was curious more than anything), but the struts I've found can be spec'd from 20 to 130 lbs in 10 lb. increments so there seems to be some precision in the manufacture of these..

yah, my decimal point is in the wrong area... :icon14:

Status update on mine:
We got them on during lunch but took them off. Issues:
~Bulge in the center of the hood
~Touching the Password JDM pieces (so it will touch the stock pieces)

We might need to break in the pieces a bit, but not enough time at work to do much testing.

Bulge in center. how is that even possible

We are not 100% sure yet, we have no rubber, no battery/fluid covers, nothing is touching the unit itself.
We wonder if since we only opened/close the hood maybe 15-20 times it may not have settled or if the unit is pushing on the hood at the rear and the weakest point is bending (which is the center).

I wonder if its hitting the fender piece that kenchan bent down a little. We didnt even bend our fender piece down and we have no bulge... :/

We did not mess with the fender piece, bit hot and I still had to grab lunch so we just called it after 15 minutes.
An idea to try out in your shop, is to build a bracket that pushes the ball join that sits in the engine bay over so the whole unit is in more of a straight line, might not change anything but will be better for pressure points on both the hood & unit.

Let me see what i can come up with....

Uh...that's exactly what I will be doing in a day or so

I know, but if what you do proves it works better and the supplier does it and gets the same results then it goes to show maybe a slight flaw in the design currently.

There isnt a design flaw :hello:

many things can be made better or modified. thats why we buy after market parts ;)

As of right now, both kenchan and our Z shows no bulge.

It cant be a design flaw! you didnt design anything you just found parts from existing kits that somewhat worked.

The brackets that go on the hood have a huge amount of flex and are held on by 1 bolt.

To mount the ball joints on the fenders you have to cut weather striping out of the way.

You still have a possibility of it striking the plastic trays that cover the batter/brake booster.

Granted it is a "mod" and requires some fitment work, I feel this is a poorly put together kit.

Provide some brackets that move the shocks to where they dont hit anything and so you don't have to cut the weather striping and charge 150 bucks for a "decent" kit

Hell here is what we get with the Kits on mustangs

Mustang Billet Hood Strut Kit

:iagree:

Im sorry, i guess you didnt read the entire thread.

First, there is no flex at all on the bracket that goes on the hood. Moving the ball joint over may in fact cause the damper to rub hit even more, across the entire cover and IMO i dont think to long brackets coming towards the center of the engine will look good :/. Its kind of hard not to hit anything when the tray is in the way of everything ;)

You do not need to cut the entire weather striping.

Shall I take video of the flex?

Yes moving it more towards the center and straightening it out might take some effort to "design" and get right but would ensure that it would work properly. I am kind of pissed that I didn't do this and start selling them myself.

Yes but you still have to cut it and that is my point. Where if a lower bracket were provided you wouldn't have to cut it. much like the one you see on the mustang kit where it moves the ball joint inline and not on top of the fender.

I am not trying to attack you at all nor do I think its a bad price for what you get or anything like that. I just feel that there wasn't much thought in the "kit" where there could have been and it would have made a much better product. But you get what you paid for I guess.

sent you a PM. Just checked our Z and there is NO flex at all. can you also send pics of this.

not taking it as an attack, you have every right to voice your opinon

I responded, I appreciate you handling this maturely (many people here take things personally and it gets nasty)

This is the only picture that we got today, only had my phone so not very good.
http://lh4.ggpht.com/_wgFNZZBDMaE/S-...2012.05.43.jpg

dreamer can you confirm its hitting the covers also, did you try moving them over a bit towards the fender?

I have Password JDM pieces which replace the covers, but they are just a very bit "skinner" and they touched. I cannot move them over as I do not want to file out the holes unless something major happens, once we saw they were being hit we just removed the pieces and went onto the next step to see what else was hitting or causing any bends.

Here is a shot of kenchans hood. looks good/level...
http://i57.photobucket.com/albums/g2...1273031891.jpg

yep, the damper rubs in 2 areas. the shaft to the fender ledge (bend it down) and the damper housing to the battery cover (take the battery cover off the ledge). then it turns out like my pict. :p

i wish phalen would've posted here and did his damper mod with a nice bulge like dreamer's. then i couldve re-verified to him why he is a faux j-style character and im the real thing. :D ;) jk phalen. hahaha.

dreamer- hey, atleast you tried! now keep trying. hahahaha. :D

^ :mad: :wtf: haha

i didn't even buy one of these...lol

:icon18: hahaha. :hello:

Patience Gentlemen!

These just arrived minutes ago......More when I've played around a bit..

http://images17.fotki.com/v284/photo...MG_2532-vi.jpg

OK Kids...Here are the results. Thinking I could move the lower ball in to aviod the Battery cover rub was a FAIL. This is because the cause of the hood bulge is the Body of the strut hitting the Front-back molded rib in the hood...The one that drops into the foam cradles. I tried several locations for the ball and could not avoid interference here with the consequent bulge. I finally moved things in enough that the strut tube parallels the hood form and no longer interferes anywhere with the closure. Need to finish up the other side but this will give you an idea:

Fail:
http://images17.fotki.com/v523/photo...MG_2534-vi.jpg

Success:
http://images49.fotki.com/v1556/phot...MG_2535-vi.jpg

You need to drill a 1/2 hole in the battery cover:
http://images56.fotki.com/v1597/phot...MG_2540-vi.jpg

http://images110.fotki.com/v566/phot...MG_2538-vi.jpg



Works great even with only one strut in...