I bought these from a Mazda dealer in Europe. Please don’t ask me who as I would not recommend them, too difficult to work with and excessive surcharges.

The bonnet dampers work great, and look even better. The struts move very easily either going up or down. They offer very little resistance, there’s no way they will distort/bend the aluminum hood. Mazda designed these to work perfectly for the RX-8. I believe they’re perfect.

The entire job took approximately four hours to complete. Before you begin, besides the obvious tools, you will need the following to complete the install:

1. touchup paint
2. a hand rivet tool – the instructions show a Gesipa brand but any similar hand tool will work. I borrowed a friends AVK AA170. You must have a “thread conversion kit” to fit your rivet hand tool. This conversion kit needs to be a 6mm (this is the thread size of the thread inside the rivets). Check with your local fastener shop to order one for your hand tool.
3. a 6mm hex nut to replace item “M” in the instructions. Item “M” will not fit the bolt it is meant to be used on.
4. a 9mm drill bit. I couldn’t find one so I bought a 11/32 (8.73mm) and enlarged the holes to 9mm using a round file.

I put my comments in red on the instruction pages. These will help you during the install. As you can see from the instructions, no verbiage is given, it’s all shown by illustration only.

A couple of items of concern with the instructions. This install requires you to move the large cable/wire housings that run parallel to both the sides of the inside fenders. This is needed to make room for the struts when the hood is closed. I had to move these inward further than the instructions specified. It was a bit to tight otherwise. You may have to play around with this a bit.

The second item was I didn’t like the way the passenger side hose was tied around the rubber molding by the windshield wipers. I bought a 14 inch tie and tied it around a bracket on the firewall. I included a picture of what I did.

Hope this helps.

 

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instructions p. 1

 

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instructions p. 7

 

Nice, I've been wanting to do that to mine.

 

That's awsome!!

greese

 

Thanks man, a good DIY.

 

Wow!! Thanks - off to UK in June and was looking at these. Done deal now.

John

 

Well done! But...

How much did these cost you? As soon as that info is posted, as well as where we can get these, I'll move this thread into the DIY forum. :D

 

That sure is a lot of 'messing about' - threaded inserts, moving the ground, hex keys, rivet gun - thats ridiculous!

See my 'Hood struts from scrap' thread - bolt on, nodrilling, actual 'ford' parts!

S

 

this is old thread, but I was wondering if any one has the pictures and instructions of the Mazda bonnet damper from this thread.

I have seen StealthTL's DIY but I also like to see how the Mazda ones is installed.

Thank you.

 

Testing the image fixing solution.

Edit: See Zoom - posting a new image makes the old ones appear.

Unless you fixed them while I was posting...

 

How much did you pay for the Mazda damper kit? I was also looking at Tein's hood damper kit for RX-8, but it costs around $170. Although, the installation seems to be a lot easier according to Tein.

Tein Hood Damper Scroll down for pictures of the RX8 kit

 

That looks great! i bet its easier for the regular oil checks etc. Did you find it difficult to install?