Toyota GR86, 86, FR-S and Subaru BRZ Forum & Owners Community - FT86CLUB - View Single Post - Perrin vs. GrimmSpeed strut tower braces

GrimmSpeed · 12-12-2014, 12:15 PM

Some good suggestions. We have a big long thread about the development of this piece that you probably don't want to comb through. There are also SEVERAL "What do you think about your strut bar" threads on here with rave reviews. We have video testing of strut tower deflection going around medium speed cloverleafs with and without the bar. Lots of info out there, and lots of independent tests by people who own it.

I was lead engineer on this project and THE BIGGEST strut bar skeptic in the world. We weren't going to make it if it didnt do anything, and I certainly wasn't going to be the one to defend it if I didnt feel like it was worthwhile. After we did the deflection testing we knew we were on to something, but we had been driving the car so much that we'd lost the feeling. Then one day one of our sales guys took the car out to go pick up something, lunch or whatever I don't remember. But he comes back in and asked me if we had put the strut tower bar that we were talking about on the car, which we had. He had no clue it was on there, and yet saw a difference so noticeable that he came to us about it, and this was only low speed driving on terrible pot hole ridden Minnesota roads.

So this gave us an idea, and we started to do blind testing. Randomly add or remove, or leave the strut bar, have the same person drive it and guess if it was on or off several times in a row. Had an engineer do it, had the owner do it, had sales guys do it, and almost every single time they were right.

There's been reports of other people doing this, not only on this forum, but on others. Here's one: http://www.ft86club.com/forums/showp...postcount=1150

Now we didn't tell the guy to do this, he just did it and was so excited he wanted to post about it.

Then one day when we posted the bar on facebook we had a skeptic arguing exactly what we're seeing here: strut bars are only for bling, they don't do anything, I autoX and I can tell the difference, etc.

So we sent him one: http://www.ft86club.com/forums/showthread.php?t=46737

So the user impressions are there. Is it going to knock .3 seconds off your lap times? I don't know, it depends on how good of a driver you are. Will it help with consistency and more importantly confidence? It certainly does. But if there is one thing to take away from this is that I was the biggest strut bar skeptic, right there with so many of you, and I really wanted to make something that you could bolt on and actually feel. There are hundreds of people saying that we did just that, and unfortunately the only way to know isn't by sitting here and bench racing about it, but by actually feeling it.

Plus it looks pretty neat

Chase
Engineering

12-12-2014, 12:15 PM	#35
GrimmSpeed Join Date: Nov 2011 Drives: '13 BRZ, '12 WRX Location: Minneapolis, MN Posts: 1,676 Thanks: 271 Thanked 3,552 Times in 886 Posts Mentioned: 218 Post(s) Tagged: 4 Thread(s)	Some good suggestions. We have a big long thread about the development of this piece that you probably don't want to comb through. There are also SEVERAL "What do you think about your strut bar" threads on here with rave reviews. We have video testing of strut tower deflection going around medium speed cloverleafs with and without the bar. Lots of info out there, and lots of independent tests by people who own it. I was lead engineer on this project and THE BIGGEST strut bar skeptic in the world. We weren't going to make it if it didnt do anything, and I certainly wasn't going to be the one to defend it if I didnt feel like it was worthwhile. After we did the deflection testing we knew we were on to something, but we had been driving the car so much that we'd lost the feeling. Then one day one of our sales guys took the car out to go pick up something, lunch or whatever I don't remember. But he comes back in and asked me if we had put the strut tower bar that we were talking about on the car, which we had. He had no clue it was on there, and yet saw a difference so noticeable that he came to us about it, and this was only low speed driving on terrible pot hole ridden Minnesota roads. So this gave us an idea, and we started to do blind testing. Randomly add or remove, or leave the strut bar, have the same person drive it and guess if it was on or off several times in a row. Had an engineer do it, had the owner do it, had sales guys do it, and almost every single time they were right. There's been reports of other people doing this, not only on this forum, but on others. Here's one: http://www.ft86club.com/forums/showp...postcount=1150 Now we didn't tell the guy to do this, he just did it and was so excited he wanted to post about it. Then one day when we posted the bar on facebook we had a skeptic arguing exactly what we're seeing here: strut bars are only for bling, they don't do anything, I autoX and I can tell the difference, etc. So we sent him one: http://www.ft86club.com/forums/showthread.php?t=46737 So the user impressions are there. Is it going to knock .3 seconds off your lap times? I don't know, it depends on how good of a driver you are. Will it help with consistency and more importantly confidence? It certainly does. But if there is one thing to take away from this is that I was the biggest strut bar skeptic, right there with so many of you, and I really wanted to make something that you could bolt on and actually feel. There are hundreds of people saying that we did just that, and unfortunately the only way to know isn't by sitting here and bench racing about it, but by actually feeling it. Plus it looks pretty neat Chase Engineering