Originally Posted by GrimmSpeed
Okay, these things look pretty cool. Not 900 dollars cool, I don't have scrilla like that, but from a "crazy engineering with a ridiculous budget" design perspective, it's pretty cool.
Like most of TRD's stuff it's not made, designed or developed by them it would appear, it looks like it's made by Aisin. That's good news because we know their design and engineering/testing abilities are legit. But even more so, as they are an OEM supplier, maybe this ends up being a part that turns into something that will be OEM/standard/way cheaper if it actually provides measurable and feel-able differences.
The first thing you have to know about this is that the strut towers definitely have a fore and aft movement. Every time you hit the brakes, every time you hit a bump, and a minor one when cornering the strut towers will move back and forth. Using the firewall to tie the strut towers together kind of gives the OEM a "two-fer" in that they can control that fore and aft movement some, but they also can somewhat control the side to side movement as well. This design is very inexpensive, and also allows easy access to the engine for maintenance, while being good looking. Definitely not optimized for strut to strut connections, which you can read about in some of my other posts on this site.
So when you hit the brakes the strut towers are going to pull the stock brace on the firewall, hit a bump and it's going to push (as well as the opposite movements in recoil). There is constant movement between the strut towers and the firewall, and it leads to flexing at the firewall. That firewall flex is going to be cyclical, and thus fatiguing the material (however gradually). It also is going to be a contributor to NVH as it's pulling and pushing on everything connected to the firewall, which is pretty much everything in the driver's cabin.
Since I know nothing at all, I'm going to assume that these have a high spring rate in them, which allows them to nullify the force going to them by providing the opposing spring force. It's also going to reduce fatigue on the firewall because the spring will now be the object displacing in and out. Just the same it should be able to reduce the majority of these unwanted forces, which means that less of the overall force will make its way to the cabin.
I don't know. The theory is sound, the idea is certainly cool, the price is a bit crazy, but overall I like it. I would have assumed that the door stabilizers did absolutely nothing too, but people seem to like them. That's another example of a "thinking out of the box" idea that is cool to see. To me it seems like these ideas are kind of the "future concepts" of some of these engineering companies/manufacturers, that they're getting to try out, and my find their way on to either production or race vehicles in the future.
Or they'll just die away, and in 15 years we'll see a picture of them on a car at a show and say "hey I remember those."
Just wanted to throw in my useless 2cents because I like to write on the forums sometimes too!
Chase
Engineering
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