Gas ram specs for assisted opening

[Shox Dr]

Been asked to fit some gas ram to a catering vans main serving hatch. This horizontaly hinged door is about 12'x5' made from ply and alli angle so will not be light.


They want the door to open and close with little effort, so really need to know the correct strength ram and the mounting points.

Any suggestions

 

[Luke]

Pretty nifty sizing tool here.

http://www.bansbach.de/com/gasfedern/online-calculator-3.html

Google found it, I've just a quick run through and it looks useful.

This website looks pretty good too.

http://www.sgs-engineering.com/

 

[Shox Dr]

Hadnt looked at google, really busy to day, hope some kind person would help me out.

So thank you, first on no good, using a damn tablet so can't run java. 2nd I need to email them.

Any more suggestion gratefully received

 

[Windy Miller]

My old burger van had a 5x3 hatch and Renault Clio hatchback struts were perfect, so you deffo need bigger than that!

 

[normspanners]

If you go to a farm tractor suppliers they usually have a large stock of rams for tractor doors windows etc. When I wanted some for a job they let me try a few different ones till I found the right strength to lift the canopy.
Toyota van with the large up n over doors are strong and long
ps how about also putting a safety bar to lock it, coz if the wind blows down, they probably would'nt want a customer splattered against the van, mind you they could allways say they had spilt tomato sauce !!

 

[Wallace]

Adjustable rams are available with a valve to reduce the gas pressure once fitted. This company (amongst others) list them, they do stainless too.

 

[F.J.]

I used SGS-Engineering when I built the coffee trike I posted about. Basically the info they need are; the height of the door from centre of hinge to end of door (not to the lip around the capping)!!, the opening angle and the weight of the door (for this I placed the door horizontal to the ground and placed a piece of timber on a set of scales. Make sure to 'zero' the scales before placing the door on the timber

 

[gavuk]

The gas springs we've had from RS are gas adjustable,we couldn't compress them at all unless some of the gas was removed,some have a visible grub screw which allows the gas to escape,others the "cylinder "clevis had to be removed to reveal the screw....