GrimmSpeed Strut Tower Brace - Review

[Gopherboy6956]

Originally Posted by BlackyRose

^^^^

In for this also. I am staying all stock and dont track or autox my car. Thoughts??

I would skip it then. It will only provide benefit in mid to extreme driving situations - Otherwise it's just a $150+ bar for dress up.

[brillo]

I do track the car occationally, so the car being more neutral in terms of handling is not a bad thing.

[mfbmike]

Installed mine lastnight. Love, love, love the feel.

Same coils as you gopher but different alignment settings. -2 all around. No particularly glaring signs of understeer but the car is certainly less "tossable" due to the reduced body roll.

Granted, our setups are different. I'm sitting with -2 camber all around with 265/35 Michelin PSS. Car hooks like crazy. I love it.

[boredom.is.me]

Originally Posted by mfbmike

Installed mine lastnight. Love, love, love the feel.

Same coils as you gopher but different alignment settings. -2 all around. No particularly glaring signs of understeer but the car is certainly less "tossable" due to the reduced body roll.

Granted, our setups are different. I'm sitting with -2 camber all around with 265/35 Michelin PSS. Car hooks like crazy. I love it.

Perfect word IMHO - "tossable"

[Gopherboy6956]

Originally Posted by mfbmike

Installed mine lastnight. Love, love, love the feel.

Same coils as you gopher but different alignment settings. -2 all around. No particularly glaring signs of understeer but the car is certainly less "tossable" due to the reduced body roll.

Granted, our setups are different. I'm sitting with -2 camber all around with 265/35 Michelin PSS. Car hooks like crazy. I love it.

good lord on the tires lol. Fatties
Yea - when my car wakes up for the year in March, or you know, July with our weather here in Fargo - I'll have it realigned.

I put my stock wheels and tires on a few weeks before I put the car away, and I will say it felt more light on it's feet than with my 17x8 245's. But, meh.

[GrimmSpeed]

Originally Posted by mfbmike

Installed mine lastnight. Love, love, love the feel.

Same coils as you gopher but different alignment settings. -2 all around. No particularly glaring signs of understeer but the car is certainly less "tossable" due to the reduced body roll.

Granted, our setups are different. I'm sitting with -2 camber all around with 265/35 Michelin PSS. Car hooks like crazy. I love it.

That sounds like my kind of setup! Thanks for your feedback!

In my sti, I have equal amounts of fun on 225/45 'street tires', 255/40 RS-3 and 225/45 R-Compound slicks. I think that they each have their procs and cons. The sharpness and resolution that the narrower tires offer is awesome and the car is certainly more 'tossable. On the stickier 255's, it's just big, fat, dumb grip with less 'sharpness'. The slicks, of course, are a whole different ballgame and I find them to actually be less fun.

Any pics?

Matt Beenen
Engineering

[mfbmike]

Originally Posted by GrimmSpeed

That sounds like my kind of setup! Thanks for your feedback!

In my sti, I have equal amounts of fun on 225/45 'street tires', 255/40 RS-3 and 225/45 R-Compound slicks. I think that they each have their procs and cons. The sharpness and resolution that the narrower tires offer is awesome and the car is certainly more 'tossable. On the stickier 255's, it's just big, fat, dumb grip with less 'sharpness'. The slicks, of course, are a whole different ballgame and I find them to actually be less fun.

Any pics?

Matt Beenen
Engineering

I actually posted a short review in my build thread. Not sure if you guys caught the tag or not.



http://www.ft86club.com/forums/showp...&postcount=114

[diss7]

Do you need to drop one of the shocks to install this, or is there enough slop or a slotted holes on the bar?

Cheers


Edit - I see that you don't need to drop the shock. PM'd.

[mfbmike]

Originally Posted by diss7

Do you need to drop one of the shocks to install this, or is there enough slop or a slotted holes on the bar?

Cheers


Edit - I see that you don't need to drop the shock. PM'd.

No need. The install takes minutes.

[GrimmSpeed]

Originally Posted by mfbmike

I actually posted a short review in my build thread. Not sure if you guys caught the tag or not.



http://www.ft86club.com/forums/showp...&postcount=114

I'm pretty bad about catching tags and mentions so I had not seen that yet. Thank you very much for the review, I couldn't agree more!

Chase
Engineering

[Dake]

I thought I'd resurrect this thread for fun and a couple of questions.

1) How much does this weigh (don't see it on the mnfr web site)

2) I've read it's important to get the front wheels off the ground before installing a strut tower brace, this appears to bolt on without and since there's no adjustment I guess it wouldn't matter if the front end's off the ground anyway. Does that make it less effective than another type like the Tanabe that has some adjustment and suggests unloading the front suspension first?

[Gopherboy6956]

Originally Posted by Dake

I thought I'd resurrect this thread for fun and a couple of questions.

1) How much does this weigh (don't see it on the mnfr web site)

2) I've read it's important to get the front wheels off the ground before installing a strut tower brace, this appears to bolt on without and since there's no adjustment I guess it wouldn't matter if the front end's off the ground anyway. Does that make it less effective than another type like the Tanabe that has some adjustment and suggests unloading the front suspension first?

It's maybe 8lbs? Its so long it was hard to gauge when I held it.

In my experience, there's no reason to lift the front of the car to preload it. I figure you'd want to bolt it to the car with normal load on the towers anyways.

There's a reason they made a solid bar instead of a adjustable bar through all their testing...

[GrimmSpeed]

Originally Posted by Dake

I thought I'd resurrect this thread for fun and a couple of questions.

1) How much does this weigh (don't see it on the mnfr web site)

2) I've read it's important to get the front wheels off the ground before installing a strut tower brace, this appears to bolt on without and since there's no adjustment I guess it wouldn't matter if the front end's off the ground anyway. Does that make it less effective than another type like the Tanabe that has some adjustment and suggests unloading the front suspension first?

Gopher pretty much nailed it.

However:

1. The strut bar weighs 3.95lbs

2. The mounts are slotted to allow for a little movement during install because the studs are not straight up and down relative to the plane of the bar, and when measuring the distance between towers for the initial design we always used the cars on the ground. Leaving the car on the ground to install is the same as pre-loading the bar. And as Gopher said, we designed it solid for a reason, because it is extremely effective. So much so that it has a noticeable decrease in low speed NVH, which is attributed to it's stiffness:



This shows the cyclic nature of the movement between strut towers. They move both towards each other, and away from each other. So being able to adjust preload to push the towers against each other starts to make less sense compared to simply locking them together.

Chase
Engineering

[Dake]

I see - makes sense thanks!