Replacing Hood Struts on 96 Maxima

Is there any trick to removing the factory hood struts to replace them? Do you need to remove the ball assembly or is there a release clip or something like that. Thanks.

I replaced the struts today. Pretty easy. The OEM struts are one piece. I was able to remove them using a 1/2 wrench although they are metric and a hair smaller than 1/2in. All 4 screws holding them in came off fairly easily. The new struts (Mighty Lift) from Autozone came with new hardware. I used the new ball studs and snapped the gas charged cartridges on.

Total cost $40. Total time to replace about 30 mins for both. The hood practically lifts itself now...nice..

thanks for the info. The dealer wants $70.00 for each hood strut.

The nice thing about using the Mighty-Lifts from Autozone, in addition to cost savings, is that they have a clip to remove the cartridge from the ball stud. So in the future you won't need to bother removing the ball studs on the hood and fender. It'll be a 5 minute job to remove clips, pull off old cartridge and pop in new cartridge. The cartridge on the Mighty-Lift is bigger than the one on the OEM. Whether or not that relates to quality, longevity, etc I don't know but it is working very well now and at $20 a piece they appear to be a good value. BTW, when installing the new Mighty-Lift cartridge onto the new ball studs you just installed, don't mess with the clip, just push them on. They pop on very easily. Just examine all four clips after install to be sure they are in place.

You may want to WD 40 the original studs to assist in removing them. I love this kind of fix. Releatively easy and inexpensive and so nice to have the hood staying up by itself again.