The trunk area is almost finished now
but one thing that still remains is how am I going to keep the lid open?
I have a few choices here which are a trunk-prop, gas springs, or just
use a stick. A trunk-prop is a two piece unit that telescopes together
and has a positive stop that keeps the lid open when it's fully
extended. You only use one of these and you can mount them on either
side. The gas springs are like a shock that are filled with a gas that
keeps them extended. Gas springs get rated in how many pounds they can
push and come in many choices. The last one is self explanatory and I've
been using this method the whole time I've been building the car. I
think I want something a little better than a stick so I chose the gas
springs. Mounting gas springs are one of the challenges when using
them because you have a limited range of how far they'll extend and
collapse. What you see below is how I'm going to mount them on the
bottom. I made these clamps out of aluminum that will be clamped around my down bars
of the roll cage that pass through my trunk. If you notice the gap between the two halves
on the left one, you'll see that they're different. The reason is so I can
mount the eyelet of the gas spring through one of these bolts. I made it
so it will still pivot but not have to much clearance when it's
clamped.
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Here you can see the clamp in place
with the gas spring attached. It's hard to see the gas spring in this
shot because the down bar and gas spring are almost the same color. It's
easy to adjust the position of the clamp by loosening the one screw. I
made the inside diameter of the clamps larger then the tube diameter to
allow for paint that will cover them one day.
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Here you can see the two gas springs
in place holding up the deck lid. Now the gas springs are acting like a
door-popper because once you hit the button on the keyless entry, they
open up the trunk with out my help. Now if I had went with a trunk prop,
I would have had to add a door-popper so I could get my fingers under
the lid so I could open it up. If you remember awhile back, I bought a
door-popper for this reason and mounted it next to the trunk latch but I
don't need it now that I'm using the gas springs instead. My gas springs
are rated at 15 lbs. each and work great but the first ones that I
bought were 30 lbs. each. The 30 pound units were way to much as the
trunk lid had a bow in it when the lid was latched right where they were
mounted. And once you hit the button to open the trunk, it was like an
ejector seat because of how strong they were. It all depends where you
mount them because the ones that I have now wouldn't work if they were
closer to the the hinges but the stronger ones might have. At
this point the trunk is about finished so now it's time to climb back into
the inside of the car and do some work.
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The first thing I'm going to do inside
the car is install some tunes. I bought this
Alpine AM, FM, CD player
months ago so I better get it installed so I can make sure it works.
This unit will also play MP3's which is one of the reasons I bought it
and it has a remote. Now I don't know how much I'll be using a remote
but we'll see. It also has a detachable face along with a case to put it
in if you remove it. I don't see myself using that either but who knows.
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