Installed, did a test drive, drove some more just to be sure, and gotta say, I'm impressed. NLSP has a lot of the same bracing I do and seeing his comments about these piqued my interest. Did a lot of searching/reading and kept a tally and in the end... a whole lotta people that don't have these declare placebo effect as a blind statement-of-fact and there are a few people that have them with mixed results/impressions/reviews.
People with Ole Factory making accusations of Placebo Effect with reckless abandon?
Sign me up.
One side effect I've noticed with my car is after installing all of the bracing I was getting a little bit of the interior crickets. Not squeaks or rattles per se but these little plasticy sounds... a little tinge of crashy but not chassis crashy. That little bit of annoyance in my left ear from the door/jamb/b-pillar junction area on roughish corners and joints in the road. I thought if these can help with that I'll be happy.
Installation is relatively easy and I'm gonna take a slight detour as there are several comments about getting the OEM screws out of the jamb. I think part of the problem people are having is they are using a phillips head screwdriver/bit. There isn't a single phillips head screw used in the manufacturing of JDM vehicles. They are JIS (Japanese Industrial Standard) and although they look similar they are different enough to cause problems when dealing with screws that have been installed with a decent amount of torque and locktite.
revlimiter.net has an entire blog post on the differences and also sells them. You'll never use a phillips head screwdriver again.
https://revlimiter.net/blog/2014/09/...-screwdrivers/
A few smacks of the Vessel impact screwdriver to knock the locktite loose and they came out quite easily. The door side of the installation required nothing more than the JIS screwdriver.
Took longer to type this out than to install. A few pictures.
Vessel JIS
OEM jamb screws came out with zero issues using the correct bit.
Review:
I really did think there was some sort of translation error and that error got the copy/paste treatment for every vendor that publishes in English. This effects steering? You're telling me that my car will cut in quicker and be more solidly planted in the nose with some door jamb piece? That's exactly what I'm telling you. It does. And as a bonus it has also addressed my interior irritations. Interior is much more solid in feel and quieter. Even with all the Cusco bracing this does make a noticeable difference. I didn't have a whole lotta crashy left to resolve and these do improve the driving experience and the behaviour of the car.
Worth it? I think so but then again I actually own these and have installed these so not sure my review is more relevant than the people that don't own these telling everyone how worthless they are.
As an aside, NLSP installed these as one of his first chassis improvements and reported he experienced noticeable improvement. I installed these as one of my last chassis improvements and have noticeable improvement.