door struts what ones?

[jamesvnz]

hey I need struts for my right and left door was thinking about the soft lift ones but herd they go after 1-2 years or are the dmc stock ones better?

the question is will they last or is it the luck of the batch? who has the best ones plse

[DrJeff]

When I got my car the lift struts were pretty worn out. The doors would lift - although the torsion bars had also been over-torqued a notch or two. I initially fitted the DMCH struts which lifted the doors well. They lifted the doors a little too well and I ended up with some serious bounce. For a while I countered this by hanging on to the door through the upward travel. I then got the soft-lift struts as a possible solution to the bounce. While others had good results (video on DMCTalk iirc) I still had bounce. I finally ended up adjusting the torque on the torsion bars for both doors. I also removed the top rubber strip (mounted to the upper door edge). Now the doors open pretty well. I can't say that with all the adjustments that my softlift struts were ever a dramatic difference from the standard struts. It seemed like having the doors aligned correctly, positioned correctly, and torqued correctly probably made most of the difference.

Future work... the driver's door seems to be too far inward on the hinge (perhaps 1-2mm too far inward). I also plan to install new upper door rubber strips once the doors are positioned correctly. Of course with these changes will come re-setting the torque on the torsion bar, etc.

[dmruschell]

The struts I bought from DMC last year for 3196 were weaker than the ones I took off of the car. Unfortunately, I had the torsion bars adjusted to the weak struts, so now I need to have them adjusted when I put on new struts so the doors won't fly open.

The Hervey struts on 5786 were old weak when I bought the car, but haven't gotten worse and will still hold up the doors. I'm going to go with DPI for my next strut purchase.

[TTait]

Soft lifts from Hervey lasted about a year for me - he replaced them free and the second pair did about the same - so I gave up. Houston struts seem to last a few years typically, but I live in SoCal where it never gets very cold.

[Dangermouse]

My first set of Hervey soft lifts lasted about 2 years, and my second is on about 4.

[Rich]

The last few replacements on ours were from DMCH. They work fine.

Each set has lasted 3-4 years, replaced as a pair whenever one of them starts to loose its force.