Home made strut brace

[friedchicken]

hey guys

Just wondering if anyone here has made a strut top brace for a commodore?
I was looking at buying one, but i cant justify that a piece of pipe and a couple mounts is worth $200...

if you have please post pics

thanks

[Matt_vp]

it depends on where u work and what kind of steel u can get access to, i brought a whiteline strut brace and think it was money well spent, i could of made one myself but it would be to much screwing around and the whiteline ones r well made, work well and look good, i hate driving a vp without one
Matt

[friedchicken]

1. im cheap
2. i dont care what my engine bay looks like. so long as the car drives better ill be happy
3. did i mention im cheap? haha

At the moment im thinkin a nice piece of 1" OD galvanized pipe and some fat pieces of angle iron should do fine. geeze i sound like a bogan

cheers

[Not_An_Abba_Fan]

A strut brace on a rear wheel drive makes hardly any difference IMO, you're probably better off replacing all your bushes with nolathane ones, putting in some decent shocks and keeping your wheels aligned by a good wheel aligner.

[friedchicken]

Yeah im acctually thinking that its probably not worth it

Went down to the local pedders, and the guy said that he wouldnt bother putting one on a vn performance wise, unless youve gone the koni/bilstien path. The guy said that vts etc are far worse for flex than vns.. surprising to me.

Ive already got nolathance, pedders fe2 height springs, gt gas shocks, whiteline adjusable front bar, adjustable tops. im just looking for cheap ways of tightening things up a bit.

cheers guys

[PaRaDoX]

hahahaha we have a back yarder!!!!

[defa]

vn's still move a lot in the strut towers. i am going to put one on my car when i have the money..

[1991_Vn2nV]

Worth the money buying a Whiteline one, and mine was more like 150 not 200.

[greenfoam]

It's on my list of things to buy too just so it stops the car bending and twisting on every bump really, that's bad for my car and will make it break in half one day :|

[Cheap6]

I've yet to see a good ie. effective strut bar for a Commodore. The ones with spherical bearings, while easy to mount and unlikely to cause overstressing (and cracking) elsewhere in the body, are flexible precisely where they should be stiff.

I have seen a couple of good designs on R33 and R34 Skylines and I'll try and dig up a few pictures.

Good strut braces should be designed to stop the strut towers "lozenging", particularly in front view. By that I mean if you draw an imaginary box, in 2D, from across the bottom of the car, up each strut tower and across between them, the strut bar should prevent that box from distorting. This means that the 'bar should have no flexible joints and be bolted to all three strut mounting bolts.

The idea is to increase stiffness, not strength so an RSJ or railway track bolted across the towers is not the ideal. Large diameter (limited by what will fit) and thin wall tube is best. Straight runs of tube are best - not possible in reality. Mild steel is as good as anything because steel alloys are all of similar stiffness (but not strength). Aluminium alloy is even better.

Picture: http://www.netcarshow.com/nismo/2005...llpaper_0c.htm