Nameless Performance Strut Bars: Lets Discuss.

[Jason@Nameless]

Hi all,

My name is Jason Griffith and I am the Engineering Director at Nameless Performance, Inc in La Center, Washington. We've been tearing away at a wide variety of performance parts for the BRZ & FRS in the last four weeks and I thought I'd weigh in a bit on what we have in store for chassis bracing, namely strut tower bars.

We have a provisional patent filed on our mounting method that we like to call the Lock Lug™, it features a AISI 1020 billet CNC machined tapered cone and fastener which fixedly locks the bar to the studs and chassis at all times, meaning that there is no chance for slip between the bar and the chassis prior to loading the bar and preventing chassis deflection in the directions of movement where it matters. The bars themselves are DOM AISI 1020 Steel, single piece monolithic weldment. Most of our bars feature multiple bar sections which are offset stitch welded together to improve the shear strength of the bar and reduce bending during hard cornering and aggressive suspension bound.

Here are a number of photos of some of the strut bars we have been successful with in the past:

Mitsubishi Evo X:


Hyundai Veloster:


Kia Optima Turbo:


And as far as our qualifications go, we also built all of the control arms (yes I'm hinting at what comes next for the BRZ from Nameless Performance) for the two Nissan S13 Rally Cars campaigned by the Summit Rally Team of Melbourne Australia for the Rally America series this year:





All 155ksi heat treated 4130 tubular arms with faceted shear panels/clevises and 3/4" 38ksi radial load heim joints (when we ordered them from FK Bearing, they asked if we were building a trophy truck). Zero failures (at all, we were chiseling rock chunks off of them with no damage beneath while other teams were swapping out piles of damaged and bent arms) on two cars at the Susquehannock Trail Performance Rally. #28 had a 2nd Place podium finish and #27 went out with ignition issues after 10 stages and a 2 minute first place lead over the rest of the 2WD competition and most of the AWD contenders. SR20's with 350+ft lb of torque at 7-8psi boost, Holinger 6 Speed Sequential Gearboxes and MCA full linear bearing 50mm inverted monotube coilovers. We also built all of the 1/4" 7075-T6 skidplates as well as the full twin circuit exhausts on both cars. Zero service requirements on any of our parts for the entire STPR rally. Looking forward to New England Forest Rally. If you're in the Northeast, you should stop by and say hi to us in the paddock. Just look for the giant red Summit Rally Team tents or one of these cars:



I think you'll be pleased with our strut tower bar designs - they're the best you can buy without welding a bar into the car. If anyone would like to post up pics of the alternatives I can also give a thorough evaluation of the design considerations that the rest of the market has to offer. There are some crap designs out there that amount, effectively, to car jewelry. Very tired of seeing our customers disappointed when we show them how poorly their knock off shiny strut tower bar works. It is pretty entertaining to have a pile of take-off parts here in our shop to demonstrate to people how not to do things....

Also, if you think the factory bars are sufficient, take one off and look at how big the mounting holes are. And that just scratches the surface - if the factory didn't want you to upgrade the chassis bracing, the strut hat studs wouldn't be a mile long. And plus, shouldn't every sports car's strut tower bar have a master cylinder brace? Ours will.

So we'd like this thread to serve as a jumping off point to discuss the various design options as we develop the bars for your vehicles. We have a badass new tubing notcher that should be here in a few days and we are eager to lay out a bar system that features some new design elements that we haven't used in the past like notched, lincoln log style interface between the strut top cross bars and the firewall triangulation bars.

I know a number of you are serious SCCA Solo2 enthusiasts with hundreds of collective years of experience and we would love to hear what you would like to see based on your experience and the demands your previous cars have required. Like we have mentioned in our exhaust threads, we are by enthusiasts, for enthusiasts and we manufacture all of our products in house including a wide variety of parts that most companies simply buy off-the-shelf. This means we can provide multiple configurations and build to order specific options with all of the products we develop. Like I mentioned elsewhere, our 2008-2012 STi TurboBack Exhaust has over 20,000 possible configurations. So lets chat...tell us what you want to see us do, and we'll make it happen in damn-near real time.

Jason

[Matt Andrews]

Hi Jason-

Your bar design looks like a lot of thought went into it. Have you done any sort of meassurement of chassis deflection with and without the bars? I've never really seen huge benefit to strut tower bars - even in cars that have a lot of chassis flex like miatas. It was hard to tell when they were on the car when you were driving it, and it was really hard to see the difference in lap times. I 100% understand there is a market for strut tower bars, and I know the car comes with cheapy little bars, so there must be *some* benefit, just curious if you have been able to quantify it yet.

The control arms you mention are of significant interest to me. Maybe I am unfamiliar with the rear suspension geometry in these cars, but there appears to be an immediate need for an adjustable control arm and an adjustable toe link in order to have any real ability to control alignment in the rear. In looking at the control arms, the upper one is cast with a clearance in it, so it would be expensive to reproduce with the ability to adjust and not become a failure point. The stamped bottom one looks easy to replicate though. Same with the toe link. My quick and dirty alignment check in my garage last night indicates there is definitely lap time in adjust-ability in the rear... Curious if you see the rear the same way I do?

I'll have other findings up in my blog within a day from crawling around the car looking for track prep needs. I'll check back in this thread as well.

Matt

[UncleFester]

Originally Posted by Matt Andrews

The control arms you mention are of significant interest to me. Maybe I am unfamiliar with the rear suspension geometry in these cars, but there appears to be an immediate need for an adjustable control arm and an adjustable toe link in order to have any real ability to control alignment in the rear. In looking at the control arms, the upper one is cast with a clearance in it, so it would be expensive to reproduce with the ability to adjust and not become a failure point. The stamped bottom one looks easy to replicate though. Same with the toe link.

Matt

It certaintly would be nice to be able to adjust the rear.

[denkigrve]

I picked up the Cusco one with the master cylinder stopper for my car since you guys didn't have one yet. I love it, but it's not nearly as crazy effective as what you guys are building. If anyone asks me for a place to find one that will make their car race ready I'm definitely gonna have to tell them to email you guys, and when I'm going to turn this car into less of a daily driver and more of a race-car, you guys are now first on my list for that component.

My only concern is on the evo one. It completely covers the strut top so adjusting the camber plates is going to require removing the bar. Are you guys planning an open one instead of that to help accommodate?

[Jason@Nameless]

Originally Posted by UncleFester

It certaintly would be nice to be able to adjust the rear.

All of them will be adjustable. LCA's and Trailing link may as well be finished design-wise. Front lower control arm is mapped out (we have a six axis digitizing arm/portable cmm here) and will be working on that tomorrow.

Wish I could have got the upper rear control arms off. But no dice. The other arm with the ball joint (can't recall what the factory calls it) at the knuckle in the rear is a cakewalk and it can wait...More on that later in another thread.

Jason

[Jason@Nameless]

Originally Posted by denkigrve

I picked up the Cusco one with the master cylinder stopper for my car since you guys didn't have one yet. I love it, but it's not nearly as crazy effective as what you guys are building. If anyone asks me for a place to find one that will make their car race ready I'm definitely gonna have to tell them to email you guys, and when I'm going to turn this car into less of a daily driver and more of a race-car, you guys are now first on my list for that component.

My only concern is on the evo one. It completely covers the strut top so adjusting the camber plates is going to require removing the bar. Are you guys planning an open one instead of that to help accommodate?

Ha. That's a prototype, we just didn't have a hole saw big enough to pop a hole in it. If we ran a triangulated shear panel like that on the BRZ it'd have a giant hole in it, but we probably won't do that type of design. :-D Good eye!

These bars are nuts. You could lift the car off the ground with one. You can literally move the car on the tire sidewalls by yarding on it by hand. Do the same with most of the bars on the market and you can physically see them move.

Regarding measuring chassis deflection, this car is PRIME for something I've been wanting to do for a long time: Put a few 1000-2000lb load cells into a pair of bars and test the factory setup!!! I've got a load cell logger and just sent my one load cell back to the manufacturer to be recal'd because it pooped the bed. I'm going to have them ship me two back so I can watch a few things at once for a change.

Jason

[Jason@Nameless]

I know there are questions I haven't answered but I need to join my business partner down at the dyno. I'll post up more tomorrow when I'm back from returning the BRZ to Seattle.

Jason

[7thgear]

would you guys be working on creating custom front uprights with repositioned ball joint and steering arm points? (so we get a lightweight custom unit as opposed to use "extenders")

[Draco-REX]

I love those designs. One thing I've never liked about most strut bars is the pivot points wher ethe bar attaches to the tower brackets. Seems like it will still allow the body to parallelogram. Your positive attachment would resist this.

My only concern is that they look heavy.

Do you plan to offer separate triangulation bars to replace the stock ones, or are you thinking of a one-piece design? Though tougher to install, I think a one-piece bar would provide the best level of stiffness.

As far as other braces, I'm not convinced the car needs a whole lot.

[Jason@Nameless]

Originally Posted by 7thgear

would you guys be working on creating custom front uprights with repositioned ball joint and steering arm points? (so we get a lightweight custom unit as opposed to use "extenders")

Hell yes. How much steering angle do you want?



J

[civicdrivr]

I love you guys. There, I said it.

[7thgear]

Originally Posted by Jason@Nameless

Hell yes. How much steering angle do you want?



J

haha, actually i wasn't thinking about drifting, just the general idea that if people wanted to lower the car and retain oem geometry etc.

[Jason@Nameless]

Originally Posted by 7thgear

haha, actually i wasn't thinking about drifting, just the general idea that if people wanted to lower the car and retain oem geometry etc.

Wut?

Honestly though, proper track geometry is our primary goal in general. Our thought however was to see how far we could get by having the two inboard bushings replaced by heim joints. That's a tall order due to the overall geometry of the arms, but I'll play with it in the computer and see what our options are. We will also be doing our best to upgrade that outer ball joint to an easily replaceable unit.

J

[R/TErnie]

Very cool strut tower design. I will steal that for my Neon