Broken strut bar mount
 

Just thought I would share this as I don't recall having seen others with this issue before.


Started hearing a clunking noise driving home Thursday night that sounded like it was coming from the front suspension. Car has been tracked many times so I figured something was wearing out or finally giving in. After pushing and pulling on many things, I figured out the passenger side strut bar mount had broken where three of the spot welds were and had sheared the fourth spot weld. The strut bar mounts are really only held on by the factory with four spot welds...


I have been running the GS strut bar for a year or two now. I am going to weld the mount back on and then find a strut bar that mounts using the three screws for the actual strut mounts.


http://i926.photobucket.com/albums/a...pshnmcoftv.jpg


http://i926.photobucket.com/albums/a...pszye2sen7.jpg

Had the car been previously crashed? Do you hit a lot of curbing?

Car has never been crashed and don't hit much curbing. It has been several months since I have been to the track and I can't remember hitting any bump that I thought was particularly jarring.

I'm surprised this doesn't happen more, its just spot welds.

whoa narly!

Whoa, that's something we haven't seen before! Including all the other designs that have adopted the same mounting method. We've had ours on our car, run hard, for 3 years now and no signs of anything like that.

I'm guessing it has something to do with the track time and curbing that may have fatigued those spot welds, but it could also be a vehicle defect. We'll keep an eye out for any other failures, but we do not expect them as these pick up points were designed to handle lateral loads, as well as braking loads!

Chase
Engineering

Geez. This makes me want to get out ye olde welder...

Hmmm might be why STi developed the flex joint brace.

Here's an older thread about the STi brace and how good it is. Also reading around it seems solid braces are meant mostly for track use where this flex design allows for potholes, rougher roads and vertical forces typically not experienced on the track. It may be vertical movement that could of caused this break not horizontal. I'm still reading up on all this.

http://www.ft86club.com/forums/showthread.php?t=22441

http://m3.miiduu.com/store3/3846/ima...BRZ-STI-18.jpg

Grim bar is too good. :thumbsup:

You can see that the TRD tower bar is carbon fiber, which also allows for vertical movement (we are talking about millimeters here) with flex but prohibits horizontal deflection.

http://www.ft86club.com/forums/attac...9&d=1335026028

Old STI tower bars were either made out of carbon fiber or titanium with the same idea in mind and they have been around since the 90's.

You get what you paid for.

Yeh a solid bar preventing vertical movement could be damaging in a street car. Interesting

Oh that's why "flexible" strut bar!
For the life of me I couldn't figure out why anyone would make a flexible strut bar - it seemed to defeat the purpose. Good to know.

Well the Nurburgring isn't a perfectly flat track either.

http://image.superstreetonline.com/f...under-hood.jpg

At least it should be a pretty easy fix - obviously have a beat laid (welded) around as much of it as there can be and paint it to prevent rust. At least it's something track folk know to look out for now...