Hood Dampers... Anyone have issues with these?
 

I'm strongly considering a set of TEIN style hood dampers for my car.

Anyone have BAD experiences with "overpowered" struts affecting the hood curvature or simply overstressing the supplied hardware?

David

the tein ones work fine, dunno about all of the tein style ones though.

I actually just received mine from Chuck at Rotary Extreme. Looks to be a great product and I should know how easy the install is in a couple of weeks.

no problems with mine at all. I LOVE them. They make working on the car easy.

My hood rides higher when closed on the passenger side but that is due to some engine parts pushing on the hood.

Also, Crispy has a nice write-up on the install of Chuck's dampners.
http://www.negative-camber.org/crispyrx7/hoodprop.htm

installs in 5 mins. just bolt on. the one chuck has works great. not too much pressure and enough to lift the stock hood up when lifted to a certain degree. the black looks better than the green also :)

I have the TEIN hood damper and they work awesome! No problems at all with my CF hood

I'm guessing you have a Rotary Extreme hood damper as well. If so, could you tell me whether you have an aftermarket hood? I just finished reading Crispy's writeup and he had some difficulty with the install due to an aftermarket hood. Just wondering if this happened to anyone else. Thanks.

No, I have the Tein's.

I just painted them black because I hated the green :D
https://www.rx7club.com/forum/attach...hmentid=111182

what wheels are those?

^ Very nice car! Thanks for the heads up, I'll just have to try installing these and see what happens.

Yep, I'll second that. I'll just add that after a certain point (half way) you can just drop the hood into place, and it will shut fine, no stress, A+ product. :icon_tup:

I got a set of NRG struts on my 93 and I'm very happy with them. Less expensive, they come polished or carbon fiber, installed in 10 mins and fit great. I have had them for a couple of months with no problems. I like these because they match my polished Gotham Racing engine damper. I'm spending my hard earned money on quality go-fast parts. IMO a damm good deal and I only try to install quality parts on my FD.

I have not seen any fitment issues on any of the original or knock-off brands. Support should not be a problem because the hood is not heavy.

I installed the Rotary Extreme hood dampers, and am very happy with them.

The only issue is that you need to be somewhat careful of them when working on the car.

Don't lean on them real hard. Other than that, they are great.

Positive experience with RE's dampers here as well. Installation takes about 10 minutes...no problem with clearance with my stock hood. One of the best simple mods I've ever done.

On a side note, I believe it's supposed to be installed with the damper side on the hood (as pictured in 7racer's picture), but I actually installed in backwards. I wasn't sure how to remove the dampers so I just kept it as such and haven't had any problems for the last couple of years so far...

Just installed my NRG hood dampers.

Installation was very easy and fitment and clearance was perfect. I closed hood and everything was perfect.

Only issue i have, in case other future buyers might wanna know, is that these dampers are a close/open feature obviously.

I thought i can pop my hood slightly and have it stay. Meaning i dont want my hood popped all the way up, as if the stock rod was in place. I thought buying these dampers will give me what im looking for.

I was wrong, the dampers hold the hood up, as in stock position. Once you start to lower it, the pressure releases and the hood becomes free so you can close it.

I didnt know that but o well, im still happy with them.

I got a set a no-name dampers on Ebay, no problems after a year of use.

We have the Skokie ones from Ebay, work great -- no problems and a super value

+1 for the Tein hood dampers

You shouldn't have a problem with hood curvature because of how close they mount to the hinge (much thicker metal). and the bolts holding the hood hinge on are designed to not shear during a front impact, so you should be fine, unless you buy an extremely overpowered strut, and with ebay/no-name brands I would be more worried about underpowered struts.

P.S. also a strut powerful enough to cause you a hood curvature problem, or shear even an aluminum bolt, would be about the size of one of your shocks.

I run the Rotary Extreme dampers and have been very happy with them :icon_tup:

Who makes these?
Could these be like a certain design of engine torque brace...where it seems be only one manufacturer and lots of distrubutors who put their names and company colors on them? Does Tein or RE make their own?

The Tein dampers do look different from most other brands, but you are right, most hooddampers look exactly the same.
It's also quite possible that the Tein dampers are assembled in the same factory as the Ebay dampers and Tein just arranged an exclusive deal on their design.

The Rotary Extreme hood dampers are cnc brackets to match the bracket support frame of the factory hood.

When the stock hood is copied, sometimes the aftermarket manufacture makes a mistake. I recently did have a fitment issue and it was because the aftermarket carbon fiber hood was made with an error either in the mold or they drilled the bolt holes slightly off from factory spec.

It is up to the quaility of the aftermarket hood.

As far as clearance issues, there are none that I have seen or heard of yet.

Ben