Apexstone100N/22.5lb Gas Struts 10 Inch Gas Struts Lift Supports Gas Spring Lid Support Gas Props/Shocks, Set of 4

These are great! My Husband and I are working on converting a cargo trailer to a camper. We have two cabinets that have top mount doors. For over a month we struggled to keep the doors open while we were putting things in, and taking things out. Nothing worked! Finally I decided to "bite the bullet" so to speak and ordered these to try. Wow! I'm so glad I did! These came beautifully packaged with clear directions and all the necessary hardware for install. They feel hefty too, so I feel we got our money's worth. My Husband didn't have any issues installing these at all. The end result was a clean install with hinges that actually do their job! Now I no longer have to hold the doors open with my head or have to have my Husband hold the door open while I get stuff out because once we open the doors with these struts on, they stay open until we physically close them. If I was to have a single negative thing to say, it's that the directions for placement are in metric, so you have to do some configuring if you're an American and use the Imperial System. No biggie though. The conversions and easy to do and I didn't find this to be that big of an issue at all. I highly recommend these! I included a photo so you can see these in "action".

Built a locking storage cabinet suspended from the ceiling in a closet. Hinged to open up, so I needed these to "hold open". Worked fantastically! A quick check of the weight of the door (melamine/particle board) put it right in the range of these cylinders. Once the first one was mounted, the door would not stay open (expected), the second one made it work perfectly.Instructions are perfectly adequate, a simple diagram with the dimensions is all you need. The mounting plates and hardware are nicely made, and click onto the cylinder ends securely. A thin screwdriver opens the clip to disassemble the ball end without any fuss.

These struts were installed on a large black walnut chest lid and a cedar chest lid and have been working well for several months now. The installation instructions and measurements were okay but I had to make some slight adjustments to keep the lid from opening too far and damaging the edge of the lid. The struts definitely ensure that the lid stays open but are not effective when the lid is open between 0 and about 50 degrees. After these were installed I found out that this brand also has a set of soft close struts and I will try them on the next project.

Used as replacement for Stabilus Lift-o-Mat 8851SQ left supports. Apex 100N/22 10" gas struts have similar dimensions compared to Stabilus but still fit easily and worked perfectly. While none of the doors weighed more than 15 lbs. a single Apex 100N gas strut easily lifted the door and held it in place until lowered by hand and released. A "soft close" plunger kept the door from slamming shut. A single gas strut vs. two is a great savings. Not only that, Stabilus struts cost up to $40 apiece on-line! Another great installation note is that if you have existing mounting hardware (such as my case) you do not need to install the supplied Apex hardware. Apex struts fit perfectly on the existing mounts. Very happy with this purchase and heartily recommend their use.

I bought these to install on my overhead storage compartment doors in my camper. These made for an excellent and cheap upgrade. I no longer need to hold the door when I open it because the gas shocks is more than ample enough to hold the door open. I would highly recommend these.

Let me say this again: THROW AWAY THE INSTRUCTIONS! They're complete garbage. The short version: if you think of the strut as the hypotenuse of a right triangle (I'm sorry to bring up math like this! It's the only way to explain.), the instructions direct you to use a base of about 2.75"; after trial and error, my base was about 1 5/16". Confused? Do a web search for "gas strut calculator."Whew! After all that, it works great! A tad more powerful than what I need, but that's better than underpowered in my book. Sturdy, strong, well made and responsive. I'd buy it again…but I'd rather burn the instructions. Trust me on that.

The gas struts work as expected and do the job well. The downgrade to three stars is because the screws shipped with the struts are deceptively poor quality. They're deceptive because they look fine, but they are made of the weakest metal I've ever encountered in a screw.When mounting the brackets for the strut, I drilled pilot holes. I then drove a screw, by hand, into the pre-drilled hole. Before I got the screw half way in, it twisted off.Okay, I thought, I guess I need to drill a bigger pilot hole. I did so, and proceeded to twist off the second screw, too. I could see a trend.I went to the local hardware and picked up a set of screws. They solved my problem--no more twisted off screws.

I used this on my chicken coop egg box lid. It took about 6 minutes to install, including 5 minutes of reading directions and holding it up to see if I thought I was putting it in the right place. I was worried because I couldn't push it closed uninstalled to see it the spacing was right. I went ahead and guessed, installed it, and it closed and opened easily. Not only will it hold the lid open while I'm gathering eggs, but I think it will serve as a small extra layer of protection for my girls from predators as you have to add slight pressure to lift the door (2 fingers, but more than a predator might do. Who knows?) Great buy. I only needed 1 of the 4 so now I'm looking for more cool things to do with the other 3.