I added a pair of hood gas struts to my Kona today which is a nice upgrade for the hood area. I *thought* it was going to be a nice easy install, but alas I was wrong. I'm sharing the details to help out any other Kona owners who may decide to install hood gas struts as well. I started by ordering a pair of the inexpensive gas struts you see advertised all over Amazon & eBay (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07NKMBB5Q) which took about a month to be shipped from China. The gas struts themselves are very solidly built and certainly require significant pressure to compress the cylinders. Half of the 10mm ball hardware shipped to attach the struts to was usable, half was not. The good: they provide bolt-on pins that go into an unused hole along the lower frame for the hood. These tightened down nicely and certainly aren't going anywhere anytime soon. The bad: for the upper attachment to the hood hinge, they provided a bracket with a single bolt hole for which you must remove 1 of the 2 bolts from the hood to secure it over. This is a *horrible* design because the ball really needs at least 2 anchor points in order to prevent it from rotating due to the high-pressure of the struts. After tightening the bolts as tight as possible and attaching the gas struts, I lowered the hood and was surprised by 2 very loud noises. ...It was the gas struts popping off the upper attachments because the brackets rotated under the high-pressure when the hood was closed. Not one to give up, I ordered these universal 10mm strut brackets (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07N8JSMFH) and installed them between the 2 bolts on each hinge. The included screws are useless as you'll need hex screws in order to properly torque them down. I went with #8-3/4" hex screws and used a 5/32" drill bit to drill through the Kona's hinge bracket and into the underside of the hood itself. The gas struts fit like a charm and stay put like they're supposed to.
Very nice job. Would you mind sharing links to the parts you used in your mod ? Sent from my A0001 using Tapatalk
It seems like the ball fitting should be on the *inside* of the angle bracket, so the force is centered on the bolt axis instead of trying to torque itself off the edge of the hood under compression. Bad design? Are there different brackets available? _H*
