door strut questions (up or down?)

["Walter Coe" <Whalt@xxxx>]

We just had a cool New Years Day DeLorean party at my place. Three (and one
half) DeLoreans were there. (woo-hoo!)

Questions:
What is the proper orientation of the door struts? Does the rod belong on
the top or the bottom or does it matter?

I looked at photos of Rob Grady's green DeLorean, and his has the rods
pointing down. I suppose that if anyone knows then he would.

My car has the rods pointing down too and are leaking oil. They have been
leaking ever since I had the car (almost 2 years). I assume that if my rods
were pointing up, then the oil would stay in the bottom and not leak out.
But then instead of leaking oil, I suppose they would loose their charge
faster. Oil is thicker than the nitrogen charge, so if it is a choice
between leaking one or the other then it would be better to leak the thick
oil because it would drain a lot slower than the thin nitrogen.

My struts are also probably over-charged. We took one off today to see how
far the door would open without the strut. It didn't. Instead it rested on
the latches. Since I hear that there should be about 4" gap between the
bottom of the door and the door sill, then at least this tells me that my
torsion bar isn't over-torqued. But with the strut in place, I have to hold
on to the door or else goes up with such force that it will bounce at the
top of travel. I have already determined that I have 'cheap' struts that do
not slow down at the end of travel. Better struts have a dampening
mechanism to stop this. Mine are Lift-o-mat brand. By the way, the weather
was cold -- definitely worthy of wearing a coat. In hot Florida weather the
door has a greater tendancy to pop open.

The other two guys (Jim Sleeth & Randy Stribling)'s DeLoreans had their
struts mounted 'upside down' compared to mine such that the rods were
pointing up. Jim said that his struts are fairly new, but are not as strong
as they were when he first put them on. My theory is that his struts lost
some of their charge due to leaking nitrogen instead of oil.

Does anyone have an official answer?

Walt Tampa, FL