The strut should be around 25” long and hold the hood higher than the stock stick. Unless you didn’t bolt it to the spot as shown.

 

Update: I ordered the shorter struts for a ford flex.


It lifts the hood perfect. Also, stock height, I put the stick next to it.
Just lift a little and the lift does the rest..

This is a stronger strut that is thicker than the one OP and I ordered.
I almost wasn't able to close the hood at first, but now it is perfect

 

I do not wish to sound too academic but since this is a technical forum and some of us seem to have problems I would like to point out few thinks:
1.The gas filled struts are strong enough to support the hood if they are anchored to the points that provide a proper geometry. In fact, one strut should be strong enough to support the entire hood (many cars come with a single hood supporting strut, e.g. Golf GTI) See the following link.
One strut can support the hood. Look at images in the supplied links and notice how steep the angle of the single strut with the horizontal is.
2. If you look at the images supplied both by "teredactle" and "OutlanderGT" in this thread the angles of the struts with the horizontal are quite shallow. We have to decompose the force provided by the strut (F) to its horizontal and vertical components. Only the vertical component of this force can contribute to support (balance) the weight of the hood. Therefore in these two examples the vertical component of the force is much smaller than if the strut was fixed to a lower anchor point at the front of the car. If you look at my solution I posted above, my strut has a greater angle as I anchored the front end of the strut deeper. Indeed although my car is an Outlander Sport but one strut was able to support the hood, I simply liked the symmetrical arrangement better. As I look at the images posted by "teredactle" and "OutlanderGT" I can see many predrilled holes in the vertical sidewalls of the engine bay where the front ends of the struts could be anchored to provide a greater angle with the horizontal and this way obtain a greater supporting force for the hood. As you can see below a seemingly simple DIY can turn out to be a complicated engineering problem. If someone is interested in the details you can follow it below:


This (green) torque can be provided either by one or two struts. Now it becomes obvious why the single strut in the VW GOLF (see the images in the link above) can support the entire hood. The distance from the pivot point and the anchor point of the strut on the hood is much longer there than in our case, so a much smaller force (half or even less) can provide enough torque with the larger lever arm to compensate the torque generated by the hood (orange in the above graph).

 

I agree the geometry is pretty important

But the strut comes with different lifting forces.
in my opinion the full size outlander has a pretty heavy hood and can benefit from 2 struts. It is not uncommon to see this on SUV hoods.
Not sure if the outlander sport hood is lighter. But the outlander hood had always been a bit heavy to lift to prop the stick up.

 

My entire analysis was aimed to assist those, who mentioned that even two struts were not providing enough support. I am absolutely sure that they failed not because the struts were not strong enough but by applying a suboptimal geometry for anchoring the ends. Without drilling the lever arm in our cases on the hood is only few inches (that we cannot change this) but by selecting the other anchor point wisely can increase the vertical component of the force and thus, obtain sufficient amount of torque for the support.

 

All I can tell you is I ordered the same rams. Secured to same points on the car as in Teredactle pics and it doesn't hold it up.

I will refit them tomorrow and take some measurements but there must be a difference somewhere. Can't see a difference in my 2008 body and his 2011.

 

To be honest I ordered those and they were not very strong, a pair of them was meant to open a civic trunk.

I was afraid if the wind blows it would shut the hood and hit my head once the cylinder had any wear on it.

I changed mine to the ford flex ones (linked above) and the cylinder is thicker, the stroke were the ram makes power is also at a lower point of the hood. It's perfect now.

 

Yeah, I see your point - it wasn't my intention to go with this set at first, I read that the rear hatch from a Jeep cherokee are the perfect size, then I saw they were $20+/piece, and you still had to get ball nuts, etc, then found this set and took a chance. Since I don't have a garage, I don't have an issue, but I can see those with a smaller garage, and lifting it on ramps or such may run into a problem.

 

Strange, BUT not so strange. I checked "the wiki"

1. First generation (CU/ZE/ZF; 2001–2008)
2. Second generation (CW/ZG/ZH; 2006–2012)

So is it possible yours is 1st generation? It's weird that 2nd generation started in 2006 but the 1st gen goes to 2008?
That's all I can think of that may be the difference...

 

Just wanted to say thanks to teredactle - following the inspiration, I have fitted bonnet (hood) struts to my UK C-Crosser. Had to use different anchor points as Citroen put their nose and badges on it, but I used sentra struts from the East as I could not locate Boxi struts anywhere. Ball studs I got from well known auction site and it did quite a lot of fiddling to get the struts and fixings to clear everything that existed in the engine bay surrounds. The angles explanation is spot on as my strut angles are quite low so I have to lift is some of the way, but when open, there's so much more space to work.