My goodness Freeman thats a heck of a way to get the struts off lol I hope you weren't trying to save the hood though. Anyways I appreciate everyone's help on here. I did put them in a vice and tried the hard whacking, but the vice was old and crappy and instead of the strut popping off the ball the whole thing came flying out of the vice. So yeah I ended up cutting them out too, but it was east and only took like 30 seconds each. Installing the new ones was a piece of cake and considering my sold struts went out about 2 years ago I opened and closed my hood like 10 times in a row and just stared at it holding itself up like it was some sort of a miracle
Now I can work on my car in piece not worrying if whatever random object I grabbed to prop my hood up is going to slip out.
I did have the hood fall on me once while working on another SVX with bad struts. Hood latches plus your spine are a bad mix and I just laid on top on my engine for a good minute thankful that the car was cold at the time
