Science behind the different strut bars?
 

Has there been a thread yet that goes over all of the differences between the strut bars that are available for this car? I saw the TRD carbon fiber one and starting thinking to myself.. Wouldn't that not create much of a difference? I know it's carbon fiber, while carbon fiber not being flimsy like paper, but would it perform less than lets say the Cusco bar where it's thicker, probably sturdier, and has more points of contact to the strut towers. I'm guessing it's another, pay for the name, part huh?

It's a pretty small improvement, regardless. The tiny strut bars that we have from the factory do a pretty good job. I went with the Grimmspeed because it was priced right, and has an almost OEM look about it.

Well I can tell you that you want something that goes completely around the strut tower. I think you want ones with hinges too for performance, but honestly this part makes such a little difference in handling I haven't looked much into them lol

tortional flex on the carbon one will be better (stiffer) but points of contact are probably just as important as material used.

Hysterisis...

I've posted this a few times. It goes into some detail about the thoughts behind the BRZ tS (including its' strut bar).

http://www.motortrend.com/news/subar...s-first-drive/

http://i.imgur.com/P0qZkj3.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/CeQtG2V.jpg

^^ that engine bay looks familiar...

You get all the good shit.


So jelly...

I haven't tried others, but I have the TRD bar, and I can say there's a positive difference in feel and response.

I'd imagine it'd be quite difficult to compare, measure, or even feel the difference between different brands. Only way to find out is to try them all back-to-back lol. I'd just get any one that you can trust is a quality piece, such as GrimmSpeed, Beatrush, Cusco, STI, or TRD.

You would want a strut without hinges... Drive a car with a Grimmspeed vs Cusco, and you can tell a difference. I have a Grimmspeed bar.

I don't ever plan on running a bar because I am firmly in the placebo camp.

That being said, don't even bother considering anything that doesn't transmit the axial load in a perfectly straight line with the least possible moment couple between the tower and bar end. The mounts must be super stiff in reaction to the cantilevered load.

I had always thought that strut tower bars over the engine is pretty much useless since you have the engine bolted in there. am I wrong?

Drivetrains are not part of the structural rigidity of most cars.

I'm big on the placebo thing too. Most people put a filter on and feel like they just got a shot of nitrous. I honestly can't say the same for the GS STB though. Just being honest. No it's not a, "OMG NO WAY, THIS IS TOO REAL!!!!"

Haha... I'm with you. The GS looks legit; straight and to the point. It won't transform the chassis into an Ariel Atom but I'm sure it's noticeable.

+1.

I love my CUSCO STB and attached master cylinder brace. It noticeably improved MY confidence in this chassis during numerous canyon carving runs. I also noticed a huge difference on stretch of isolated wide open road where I can really drive the shit out of my Turbo BRZ on my daily commute.

100% stock suspension
Enkei RPF1s w/ 265/35/18
315whp Mustang DYNO

The strut bar was huge on my build and my car drives really nice.

I have the TRD one, and it is barely noticeable, being a brand new modern car with some pretty decent body rigidity already.

But it just looks so. F***ing. Good. Seriously. So i got it mainly because i like the design, quality is top notch, it is extremely light and, of course, because i am a bit of a TRD whore.

Get a strut bar that is one piece like the Carbing one. The one with master cylinder brace is nice and gives your pedal a nice feel.

If you go back 3 years ago before our strut bar was available, and look at the development thread (which needs some of the picture links fixed), there are tons of stories of strut bar skeptics. Myself being the biggest.

That made me the perfect person to do the testing and design. If it wasn't going to work, we weren't going to make it. We went 100% function with the bar, making the brackets as strong as possible with the space and thickness available with the studs/area. And when we put the bar on, just tooling around low speed in the pot hole ridden parking lot of our old shop, you could feel a noticeable improvement in NVH. To me it was unbelievable, so we starting doing blind tests with different workers here. I believe that 9/10 of us could tell a difference, and this wasn't even at speed!

So we prompted other skeptics to try the exact same thing, and several did, and reported their results in various threads on this site.

We also did deflection testing where we observed that the bar was reducing a lot of deflection at the strut towers, and more importantly, it was holding the strut towers together as they experience tension and compression going through turns. It wasn't a huge amount of deflection, but at the steering wheel it's noticeable.

But a forum member contacted us on facebook, saying that strut bars don't do anything. So we sent him one:

http://www.ft86club.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1364377

Literally turning skeptics into believers, even if what he experienced was more high speed action, and less low speed.

If you search through the various strut bar threads there is always some mentions of the GrimmSpeed strut bar, so there is plenty of info out there for you to get other people's impressions if you're interested.

Chase
Engineering

Here is the science for MOST of those that buy a strut bar:


http://lmgtfy.com/?q=the+placebo+effect


I am not saying that they don't have their place but probably 80% of the people on this forum are not good enough drivers to be able to tell the difference.
On the STREET I am one of those 80%, since it is irresponsible to push the car hard enough on the street to stress the chassis enough to make a noticeable difference.

As GrimmSpeed said, you feel the difference at low speed in this chassis. It makes a noticeable improvement in NVH; weird, but it is there.

See my sig. But Will I get a GS bar eventually? Yes, because its solid, seems like it makes a noticiable difference even if small, and looks pretty like my GS intake, tie down, oil cap, and hood struts. Im a bit of a GS whore too if you cant tell.

Strut braces help torsional rigidity, no question. People say that rigidity has an effect on speed. That's not exactly wrong, but I find that ridigity has a tiny effect on speed, and a huge effect on ride quality and noise.

The MINI Cooper convertible has a torsional rigidity of around 7kN/deg, which is super low. S2000 has 22kN/deg, which is lovely, as does a MINI Cooper S Hardtop. Mercedes E-Class has best-in-class rigidity of 45kN/deg. Bugatti Veyron has the highest rating I could find (seriously, try finding these numbers) at 60kN/deg.

By that list, it seems the nicer the car, the stiffer the body. And, quite possibly, that stiffening the body improves the car. Certainly, MINI convertible is nigh undrivable while E-Class is incomparably comfortable.

But let's complicate stuff further. Everyone loves the 1991 Miata, non? It handles great with a rigidity of 5.5kN/deg.

tl;dr: Forget the science, buy the prettiest bar.