awdinut

I have a question.... if you manually lower the lid slowly from full-open vertical to 45 degrees open and then let go of the lid, will it stay in that position or fall shut ? I am trying to ascertain if weak struts are the reason my face-lift motor has been struggling in the extremely hot weather. My struts wont hold at 45 degrees but I dont know if that is par even for recently installed struts. And my lid moves easily and smoothly by had, so I do not think the hinges are the culprit.

So I am hoping its the struts and not the motor.

mcs

I had my original struts regassed a couple of years ago.

If i put the bootlid in the 45 degree position the struts push it back to fully open. it doesn't hold and doesn't close.

Mike

awdinut

I didnt think of the return to the full open possibility...but that even more soindicates that my struts are far from operating as they should to help the motor do its job. Thanks for checking.

mcs

no worries mate.

Come to think of it, I have my old black plastic boot motor (162nm) handy as I’m running the bigger (233nm) rated metal motor.

with the old motor the boot had to be helped the first inch both directions. I’m curious to see how it goes with the gas struts. Perhaps I’ll swap them back for an experiment. Find out how much heavy lifting the struts do.

TSHong

Having the same issues, metal bodied motor and will work when cold/ winter months but when warn does not work properly. I recently replaced the struts and is better but 80+ degrees is not working properly. Obviously a bad design but I think the metal bodied motor's get weak over time as well as the plastic bodied motors. .

awdinut

Well, that is the other possibility. I just ordered a set of Stabilus struts and Iwill let you know the result. Weak struts are worse in cold weather because the gas volume is lessened by the contracted molecules; but I have never seen a strut////such as a hood strut that you operate by hand and has a very apparent demonstration of function ie the hood stays up or the hood falls shut, get worse from hot temps.

Veikra

Oh I'll keep what MCS said in mind. I got a metal bodied motor to install on S8 so I will check if the struts are good enough.

As for being a bad design, I feel the worse design is the D4 with the rails IN the boot opening and the boot width reduced even more making bicycle impossible to load in.

TSHong

The struts won't let my trunk fall in either hot or cold. If your trunk falls down around a foot from bottom, they are certainly bad. My motor just won't open in hot weather

A few years ago, it was doing the same thing so I replaced the OE with Stabilus struts and it corrected the problem. Now I replaced them again with the Stabilus and because the trunk doesn't open correctly when hot weather. Now one caveat is after the first opening, it will work correctly successively afterward. But most of the time the initial opening won't work after being closed for a day. And yes, my hinges are properly lubed up too. That is why I think the clutches on the motor wear out like the plastic bodied ones but just takes longer. I assume my motor is 12 years old now.