Car is too clean! You are the Danny Tanner of the 5.5gen.

 

...but the strips aren't enough to stop the flop. They look neat, I think, but don't do enough, sadly. I paid $20 for the pair from a local dealer. My car already had the little bumper thing installed on it.

So you won't be led astray, mahamadeedorwhateveryournick is, actually read the TSB and learn that the flop is not caused by the hood latch. To permanently fix the flop, pull the insulation off the hood (hilarious how they printed MAXIMA on it, yeah?) and check for the blown spot-welds that hold the hood's outer skin to its inner structure. They are easy to spot, as they'll be rusty and, um, not touching anymore.

I used JB weld to fix 'em on mine, but didn't let it set long enough before driving highway speeds, so the JB weld didn't hold. Until the JB weld stopped working, there was zero vibration. Once it came back, it was still less than it was originally. I destroyed the car the next weekend, so I never got a chance to let the weld sit for longer than 10 hours, the package says to give it at least 15 hours, but I'm pretty sure that, when applied correctly, JB weld is all that's needed to permanently affix the hood pieces.

Edit: I think I took pictures of the blown welds. I'll try and remember to upload them here for some mad evidence, yo.

 

Finally got around to digging out those pictures, hooray! Here are several blurry pictures of the bad welds I took when I fixed mine.

Detail of how the inner hood structure should be welded to the outer skin: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2224888/good%20weld.jpg
Detail of how many of mine weren't on the driver's side of the hood, which caused it to vibrate: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2224888/weld%20closeup.jpg

See? Simple bumpers aren't enough to fix the problem.

 

Eirik- the rubber bumpstops behind the headlights are a quick fix that will help alot. My first max had this problem and I noticed the front of the hood sat lower than the fenders. I raised the stops till the hood was flush with the fenders and almost all vibration was gone. Now on my second max I recently purchased, I noticed on the drive home that the hood vibrated. Pulled over, found the hood sitting low, adjusted the stops and proceeded home with no vibration. If vibration is excessive I would definitely look into the spot welds like the tsb says. But start small and adjust the stops first.

 

My hood seemed to sit flush enough, I'm pretty sure I know what you mean when you say "lower than the fenders" because my 6th gen's hood might be a bit slumped like that (and it does vibrate, but roughly 1,000,000x less than my 5.5gen). Before strips, the front of the '02 looked like this: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2224888/nose.jpg

As I said, the strips didn't do anything for my car, besides look cool. The JB Weld on the blown welds DID stop the vibration, until the inner and outer skin separated again because I didn't take my time and apply the JB Weld properly. I s'pose it doesn't help that shear strength is JB Weld's weakest area, too.