Project Deli – How Low Can You Go?

The Mitsubishi Delica L400 Spacgear is known for many things. Most of them are pretty good. One of the not-so-good features is the fact that the HUGE rear liftgate only opens up to about 5′ 8″. Which should be just fine for me, because that is how tall I am.

However, everyone knows that gas struts eventually fail over time. Even those of Japanese quality. After all, it has been nearly 30 years. And I have a 25-pound aftermarket ladder hanging off the back.

So they have started to drop an inch or two in the cold. Just enough to cut open my scalp because I’m too careless to look up when I turn around. After the third time going to work with matted blood in my hair, I resolved to address this very personal— and very First-World— problem.

So, what to do? With the Nissan Figaro, the deck lid gas struts were specific for that model only, and I had to ship them to a specialty shop in Canada to reseal and re-gas (it took them two tries).

However, for the Delica, I was able to source upgraded aftermarket struts in the United States. However, the problem is that the Japanese tend to permanently affix their mounting hardware to the ends, making it impossible to remove. Hmmmm. But I need to reuse some of it.

The top rivet and pin is swedged to the bracket. They don’t want to make it easy. I will have to modify both the top and bottom of the new struts to a 10mm ball socket and reuse the upper hardware mounts.

The bottom was easy. I sourced 10mm ball sockets with an M8 thread and used spare washers I had lying around—piece of cake.

The uppers would make up for that. A different beast entirely. No simple spin-on and spin-off there. Time to prove I was more than a monkey with thumbs (and tools).

To reuse the factory brackets, I thought that after drilling out the rivet cap, I could simply punch out the pin and call it done. Wrong. The pin just would NOT drift out.

Yep. My Nippon brothers put three little spot welds on that bitch. Didn’t need to. But it did last 30 years. Even after I drilled them completely through and hollow, it took a big hammer and a lot of swings.

The bottom of the strut 10mm ball-and-socket conversion worked like a charm, with a new washer to disperse the stress.

The top bracket convertion with the M8 10mm ball stud to accept the newly converted 10mm socket fits! Success!!

Of course, when I opened the rear gate, I remembered that I had upgraded the new gas struts to 32 inches, which is longer than the factory 30 inches, for increased head clearance.

What I learned was, depending on your application, another two inches can be the same as …..

Well, a foot and a half!!! At least with gas struts on the rear liftgate of a Delica L400 Spacegear. No more hitting my head, but I almost need a stool to reach the pull-down strap!

DelicaBoy out! Until I tear into the transmission fluid change.