I added ladders to my hatch and misjudged the weight...Now the hatch won't stay open. Am I stuck using a broom handle now every time I need groceries or is there such a thing as heavy duty beefier struts I can put on there? Or am I looking at more custom work to get it to stay open like adding brackets and putting 2 struts on each side? I'm shooting in the dark here asking for help becuz I'm betting nobody ever ran across this problem lol

 

I replaced my oem struts with this when i installed 2 Gobi ladder.

https://www.gobiracks.com/product/re...ent-hummer-h2/

 

I put these on and a week later found a great deal on a pair of Gobi ladders. So far they work fine. When these wear out or aren't getting it done anymore I will use the ones citiboy referred to.

 

Any one have experience with StrongArm struts? I have had bad experiences ordering from Gobi.

 

Problem is one of my ladders isn't Gobi, it's custom and weighs about double the Gobi one

 

Any one have any opinions between choosing Tuff Support or StrongArm? Do these struts support more weight than OEM or the same? I couldn't find anything about the lift performance on them.

 

I ordered a second GOBI with the heavy duty struts. It has been almost 5.5 months with no update or anything from GOBI. I ordered through HummerPartsClub where I have bought multiple things and they have always been great to me but this is starting to **** me off. I wish I had the struts so I could compare them to the one's you guys are asking about so maybe we could find cheaper replacements that would hold the hatch with ladders.

 

I've ordered replacement ones for compartments on ambulances before from this place https://www.liftsupportsdepot.com/

The trick is finding any identifying marks on the existing ones that you might be able to look up online and find the specs for. Then for our purposes it would be a matter of determining how much weight they would need to support. There are multiple types of ends, extended and compressed lengths, and force ratings that all must be figured out.

On the plus side they list the compressed and extended lengths, the stroke length on that site as well as the type of ends they need and the weight ratings. They show two brands for the rear hatch. The Strong Arm brand ones are stated to have 160 lbs of force while the Stabilus ones are rated for 171 lbs of force.

So my thought would be to remove both struts from the hatch and see what it actually weighs. This would of course take a bit of effort and you will probably want a helper but my thought would be to use a piece of 2x4 and rest the gate on the 2x4 and have that on a reasonably accurate floor scale. Most any halfway decent residential scale should be reasonably accurate in that weight range since its in the range of a persons weight. I'd probably take that weight and then add another 10 to 20 lbs in trying to determine the rating needed for a replacement strut.

Thinking out loud on this..... I think the extended length and the ends along with the force rating will be the most critical. The compressed length cannot be longer (or the hatch will not be able to close) but I dont see why that could not be shorter if thats the only option - the ramification of that might be that when closed it is ready to fly open though if it were only compressing to half of its fully compressed length. If that is the case just watch your chin and face when opening the hatch lol. I guess that might also put undue stress on the latch as well if its actively pushing against it all the time.

There are also thousands more available as specific part numbers beyond what it easily found on a site like above. Hunting down the specs will be the key as well as matching specs to what we might want. May even have to try directly contacting some of the manufacturers with a set of specs needed to see if they can provide a part number.

 

Last time I ordered something from Gobi I waited 6 months and never received it, that would've been okay had they given me any updates. They never responded to emails or phone calls AT ALL. I will never order anything from Gobi again, worst customer service I've ever seen from any company ever. I had to challenge the payment on my credit card, they didn't even dispute it, so I guess they had no intention on filling my order, and I got the money back. I ordered the StrongArm struts and will see how they do. I contacted the company and they said each side is rated for 160 pounds. I'm not sure how that compares to OEM.

 

Who did you place the order through for GOBI, directly through them or different vendor?