SuperTek Industries - Master Cylinder Brace

[Travisty75]

History and purchase overview:
I ordered my Master Cylinder Brace from Supertek on somewhat of a whim on 12-28-13 from this thread: SuperTek Industries Master Cylinder Brace. I knew of GrimmSpeed's brace, but didn't know of any others on the market. After purchasing the brace, I received an email confirming my order, but didn't receive any correspondence after that. I also did a bit of homework and found Perrin's unit, which looks amazingly similar to this unit.

The reason I went with the unproven Supertek unit over the GrimmSpeed? For the money I would be paying for a piece of laser'd and brake'd steel, I could get a nicely machined unit from aluminum: It seemed like a no-brainer at the time.

The brace arrived around the 7th of January. Packaging was done well enough, and the instructions were satisfactory, but the initial sales-pitch is laden with grammatical error. This probably won't bug anyone else, but to me it's a simple matter of two seconds worth of proof reading which will keep me from thinking your company is filled with hill-bucks.


See the issues? I'm just anal about those things, no real big deal.


Installation and review:
The included directions are very straight-forward, and leave no guessing to be done. The tools provided are what's needed, but I found that not having a 19mm wrench (I have one now, haha) stopped my installation for an evening. There is not enough room between the end of the MCB (master cylinder brace) and the MC (master cylinder) to fit even my smallest adjustable wrench, nor could I squeeze in a set of Vice Grips. New wrench, and everything was finished and tightened to spec.




My only gripe about the product is that there is no load-dispersing base for the MCB-to-MC connection. All of the force is applied through the very small base of the set screw used as the contact point, and this actually mars (not Mars) the surface of the MC itself. Does it damage it enough that I'm worried? Not right now, but I do worry about long term effects of the MC trying to move against the MCB.





Initial driving impressions are positive. The pedal doesn't seem to have as much travel before really being effective on the brake system. Actual hard testing of this unit will have to wait until my AutoX season starts, and with our weather that won't be for a couple weeks.




Overall takeaway from this?

Buy a different brace. The fact that this unit costs near as much as the others on the market, but doesn't include the all-important foot, with 20:20 hindsight, doesn't make this unit worth what I paid. I would have rather had the simplistic design of the GrimmSpeed unit with the foot, or the original machined unit by Perrin (which doesn't include a foot either), or the newly announced Radium unit.

[wparsons]

Wow, I know there's only so many ways to do certain things, but this looks A LOT like the Perrin brace.

http://perrinperformance.com/i-13324...-fr-s-brz.html

[Travisty75]

Originally Posted by wparsons

Wow, I know there's only so many ways to do certain things, but this looks A LOT like the Perrin brace.

http://perrinperformance.com/i-13324...-fr-s-brz.html

Yep, that's referenced in my original post. I honestly think that this is a blatant plagiarism of Perrin's part, but I didn't know Perrin had a brace when I ordered mine.

[wparsons]

Not gonna lie, I didn't really read the whole post

I'm sure it'll work great, it's just shocking to me how some companies don't even try to change copies up a bit more.

[Supertek Industries]

The physical shape and design is different than the unit you are referring to. If we had one here we could do a side by side for you. Not to mention this unit is made form T7075-T6.

Thanks for your review, we hope you enjoy.

[Supertek Industries]

bump

[sosick]

I have the perrin and it does look pretty close to it. but that radium one looks sick. I will be putting a bolt like the radium on has in my perrin and itll fix the no foot issue.