Strut bars Important?

[Muzz]

Good reading on strut braces here - http://e30m3performance.com/myths/St...bar_theory.htm

Infact quite a few good suspension articles here - http://www.ozhonda.com/forum/showthread.php?t=55663

[Muzz]

Save up a little more and get some shocks first, swaybars and sticky tyres. theyll make 1,000,000 x the differance in performance and handling compared to bracing rear suspension points. Theres no measurabe increase in speed/decrease in laptimes with a rear tie bar on our fwd cars, at most the car may feel slightly stiffer, somthing which 90% of people confuse with going faster, or increased cornering power.

I just ordered brand new koni sports for $680 from the US, thats stupid cheap, let me know if you wanna know where from. Swaybars/shocks/springs/tyres are your cars best friend!

Rear tie bar will do very very little at all to make you faster, you wont feel much more than a placebo effect. IMO adding the bars in the rear is pointless without 1st having sticky tyres, sport shocks, good springs, and swaybars, as you wont be reaching the high cornering forces where bracing becomes worthwhile.

I added an ASR subframe brace a while back, which i guess doubles as a tie bar, its the beefiest on the market. I wanst expecting to feel much difference if any, i wasnt surprised to not feel one slight difference that was strong enough to be any more than a placebo.

[qstoria]

if you had any idea of what they do you wouldnt be here asking this question... and no, i'm not going to spoon feed you.

congratulations actionman-1. that is the dumbest and rudest response I have seen in a while

if 040509212 new what they do then of course they wouldnt be asking the question in the first place would they? same goes for anyone asking any question. The reason you ask a question is to learn the answer..

think about that next time you dont know something and ask for help

[Muzz]

What this does is create unwanted pressure on the rest of your vehicles suspension system as it tries to compensate for the shift in weight caused by the twisting of the cars body. This can cause negative affects such as body roll, plough understeer, and the extra load on your tyres will cause increased wear. Basically your car is a blob of jello.

When you put braces on your car, it ties one side of your car to the other, and puts a strong braces between them, usually on your strut tower tops, at time between your pillars, or in the case of race cars, at multiple points throughout the body via a roll cage. What this does is creates a reduction in the amount of body roll and weight shift, which will help turn in and mid corner stability as your body is now more rigid.

Pretty much all of that is incorrect, bracing suspension mount points via braces wont effect bodyroll at all, wont effect weight transfer/shift either, wont put extra unwanted pressure in the suspension system, and wont effect loads on the tyres in a negative way. And im very interested to hear your reasoning why bracing is going to increase in corner stability and turn in.

Also there is no shift in weight caused by the twisting chassis, The centre of gravity dosnt move. Its the cars weight transfer, acting on the two different roll stiffness front and rear which causes the body to twist, one end wants to roll more than the other causing the twisting.

Increasing the torsional resistance of the chassis wont effect the amount of total weight transfer.

What bracing the car does is:
1. Braces the suspension mount points relative to each other. The sole benifit of this is to keep the alignment of the tyres from momentarily changing with large forces from cornering. With things flexing, the alignment angles are moving around, you want to reduce this flex (why race cars use solid spherical bearings in place of the flexy rubber, to keep the alignmnt from changing momentarily with the massive forces).

2. Increases the torsional ridgidity of the vechicle, which isnt really that benificial at all with our FWDs.
Increasing the torsional resistance, keeps the roll angles at the front of the car, and the rear of the car more equal. The benifits being it simplifyes the suspension tuning, it will very slightly reduce weight transfer at the end of the car with the softer roll resistance, but increase it by the same amount on the end with the stiffer roll resistance. It lowers the cars frequency of vibration or somthing which is way outa my depth to understand. It also makes eack corner of the car more independant from each other to a very slight degree.

[040501912]

geeh i think he is tired of answering Noob question.. well sometimes that understood able.

Well I didnt hold any grudges on him. Tough words though

[Zilli]

Pretty much all of that is incorrect, bracing suspension mount points via braces wont effect bodyroll at all, wont effect weight transfer/shift either, wont put extra unwanted pressure in the suspension system, and wont effect loads on the tyres in a negative way. And im very interested to hear your reasoning why bracing is going to increase in corner stability and turn in.

Also there is no shift in weight caused by the twisting chassis, The centre of gravity dosnt move. Its the cars weight transfer, acting on the two different roll stiffness front and rear which causes the body to twist, one end wants to roll more than the other causing the twisting.

Increasing the torsional resistance of the chassis wont effect the amount of total weight transfer.

What bracing the car does is:
1. Braces the suspension mount points relative to each other. The sole benifit of this is to keep the alignment of the tyres from momentarily changing with large forces from cornering. With things flexing, the alignment angles are moving around, you want to reduce this flex (why race cars use solid spherical bearings in place of the flexy rubber, to keep the alignmnt from changing momentarily with the massive forces).

2. Increases the torsional ridgidity of the vechicle, which isnt really that benificial at all with our FWDs.
Increasing the torsional resistance, keeps the roll angles at the front of the car, and the rear of the car more equal. The benifits being it simplifyes the suspension tuning, it will very slightly reduce weight transfer at the end of the car with the softer roll resistance, but increase it by the same amount on the end with the stiffer roll resistance. It lowers the cars frequency of vibration or somthing which is way outa my depth to understand. It also makes eack corner of the car more independant from each other to a very slight degree.

A very proficient answer, thanks... in my head, im saying pretty much what you have stated, but you have been able to word it in the correct way

Im just a little confused here
"wont effect bodyroll at all,wont effect weight transfer/shift either, won't put extra unwanted pressure in the suspension system, and wont effect loads on the tyres in a negative way" then you said - The sole benifit of this is to keep the alignment of the tyres from momentarily changing with large forces from cornering (if the tyres are not affected, what does a change in alignment do to a tyre?)... keeps the roll angles at the front of the car, and the rear of the car more equal (if the braces wont affect body roll at all why do you mentioned it here?)

In point 2 you start by saying that increases in torsional rigidity dont really benefit our FWD cars, then go into explaining why it does. If there is no benefit why do race cars have cages? surely its not just for safety?

"Increasing the torsional resistance of the chassis wont effect the amount of total weight transfer" - i understand this, there will be no basic reduction because the weight is still there, i think i meant the roll factor wont be as bad.

"And im very interested to hear your reasoning why bracing is going to increase in corner stability and turn in" - my semi educated view is if you try and turn a car in violently to a sharp turn, and it has NO bracing, the twisting notion you have expressed will take away from vehicles ability to change direction quickly, cleanly and sharply... am i incorrect? With reference to mid corner stability, once again im referring to the notion that the car body is experiencing the twist which you speak of, mid corner adjustments SURELY can be made easier and more precise if the top half of your car body is not like a jello cube and can follow what the bottom half wants to do... am i incorrect?



I may have got some things mixed up here with swaybars and strut bars, im not a pro, and dont profess to be really... but i like to learn so if you could clarify for me that'd be great... just for my information, do you race or have vast experience with this stuff?

I look forward to hearing back

[lil_miss_vtec]

I have a front and rear strut brace on my crx (also had them on my EK Vti-r) & think there is definatly a diffrence when cornering!!
I agree, stiff suspension (coil overs) and tyres etc will also make a diffrence when it comes to handling but front and rear strut braces are the go

[beeza]

congratulations actionman-1. that is the dumbest and rudest response I have seen in a while

if 040509212 new what they do then of course they wouldnt be asking the question in the first place would they? same goes for anyone asking any question. The reason you ask a question is to learn the answer..

think about that next time you dont know something and ask for help

x2
Responses like Actionman's make people afraid to ask questions

I put all 4 strut bars on my EK sedan when I first got it and it made a hell of a difference but say I take a corner quickly and accelerate through the corner the front wheels spin and slide out,that's understeer right? How do ya fix that apart from tyre pressure?

[SiReal]

beeza, some say to get bigger sways both front and rear - that should neutralise the understeer and potentially give u oversteer. on a heavier car like my accord, i get understeer...

[Silver-Arrowz]

Sways make the biggest difference on the road. Strut braces won't be noticed much. If your not going to track the car then don't bother with rear struts.

[Ph@t-G]

Hey beeza, there will always be some form of understeer and torque-steer as it's the nature of our cars being FF. I've heard that to increase the ratio from understeer to oversteer is to install a large sway at the rear or to only install sway at the rear. Not sure how valid that is though....

[SiReal]

agreed. sway bars made a world of difference. it was great.

it took me a while to regain confidence in driving with it. characteristics changed major!