Do you notice a difference with your front strut tower brace?

[kevboost7]

Looking into a front strut tower brace. Have you guys noticed a difference with it installed? Any reccomendations on a certain style? I love the look of the mines brace, but its hella expensive. 

[Duncan]

They are decoration. You might notice the difference if you were doing a lot of track work without a roll cage and tested it back to back.

[kevboost7]

alright, guess that saves me a couple hundred bucks then

 

[Dose Pipe Sutututu]

Our beloved Skyline shit boxes run double A arms / double wishbone, so there's not that much lateral stresses on the strut towers say to those with MacPherson struts.

As @Duncan said, they're just a decorative piece. Just gives it more of that JDM y0 wank lol...

Yeah I run one too, just to say I have a Cusco strut brace, albeit I powder coated the entire thing black because the Cusco colours look aids.

[Shoota_77]

I'm a bit up in the air on this topic at the moment too.  I'm running RB30 so only a very limited number of tower bars would fit over the top.  I LOVE the Mines or Nismo Titanium strut braces but at $2200-$2500 it's a huge amount of money to fork out if you're not going to track your car (hard).  I think I've convinced myself to go V-Cam before I blow $2500 on something that gives me basically zero benefit.   Knowing me I'll probably do both.....

 

[kevboost7]

The mines titanium one is so beautiful 😍

[GTSBoy]

I've said it before and I'll say it again. Following on from the points made by Duncan and Dosebro, I contend that unless you take the opportunity to triangulate the brace back to the firewall, you gain little to nothing in a Skyline.

[Neil]

Personally I think they actually do some good, I had a whiteline rubbish one on my race car (R33gts-t) and granted that I never noticed anything different in the front end, but after removing it, the strut brace tower mounts were all bent out of shape. After installing a factory GTR one, no such issues. Mines going back on.

[niZmO_Man]

Yeah, that's race car. On the street?

[The Bogan]

Apples and Oranges

I know that a solid (no hinge points) strut bar tied onto the firewall of a MX5 is a massive improvement over a basic whiteline one with hinge points

 

[Neil]

23 hours ago, niZmO_Man said:

Yeah, that's race car. On the street?

That is very true, but if they are in fact a decoration, as some would say, why did Nissan make them adjustable, why not just elongate the mounting holes to suit your specific R chassis and leave it at that. Also why did Nissan install 4 x studs in the rear of an R33 with cut outs in the trim to install a rear strut brace as well. 

It's all about looking after the wheel alignment with some better consistency.

 

 

23 hours ago, niZmO_Man said:

Yeah, that's race car. On the street?

 

[GTSBoy]

9 hours ago, Neil said:

It's all about looking after the wheel alignment with some better consistency.

But it's not. really, on cars with multiple arm suspension. That is only really true on mac strut cars, which neither end of a Skyline is.

On a mac strut car a lot of the lateral suspension loads are forced into the top of the strut towers because that's where one of the locating links is mechanically connected. So strut bars help to tie those two points together so at least they move in unison, and if they can share some load then hopefully they move less. This stops the suspension angles/alignment wandering around as much.

But on a car with upper and lower arms, there is almost no lateral load put into the top of the suspension tower. So they do not have that large mechanical force put into them at such a long lever arm length above the lower inner pivot point. Sure, particularly on a Skyline front end, the upper arm is connected to the suspension tower, but it is only part way up the tower, and that tower is very very solidly build because of that connection point. That connection point is not very far above the chassis rail, which provides plenty of extra beef.

So the amount of benefit available from a strut bar on the front of a Skyline is minimal at best.

On the rear, you're talking about putting a bar onto the tops of the damper mounts, which again do not carry ANY lateral load, because it's all taken by the suspension arms directly onto the subframe. Nothing "suspension" connects to the body at all, in any meaningful way. A rear strut bar on a Skyline has got to be a pure example of placebo. It might make the body a tiny bit less wobbly. But you're also talking about putting a bar from one point to another, just underneath the parcel shelf which already ties those two places together, just above the boot floor, which also ties those two points together. From a mechanical engineer's perspective, a parallel bar between those two structures is going to do literally f**k all.

The only front bars worth considering are tied to the firewall. That will stop the front of the car moving up/down as well as left right, and might do enough to create a real benefit to handling. On the rear, the only ones worth considering are those that are triangulated down to the boot floor, because that is literally turning those parallel structures into a truss, which has go to be stiffer. But again, seeing as the suspension is NOT CONNECTED to the body, it really shouldn't make any difference to the handling. Pure placebo.

And Nissan engineers are told to do things by marketing the same as the rest of us engineers are. It doesn't have to make sense, it just has to answer a perceived want from the market.

[Dose Pipe Sutututu]

6 minutes ago, GTSBoy said:

engineers are told to do things by marketing the same as the rest of us engineers are. It doesn't have to make sense, it just has to answer a perceived want from the market.

Stop start....

"saves fuel, good for environment", nothing about oil consumption because motor is never at temp, car battery consumption from constant stop/start events... 

[Murray_Calavera]

1 minute ago, Dose Pipe Sutututu said:

Stop start....

"saves fuel, good for environment", nothing about oil consumption because motor is never at temp, car battery consumption from constant stop/start events... 

I always thought stop start was so they could cheat on the emissions testing/fuel economy figures lol

[GTSBoy]

9 minutes ago, Murray_Calavera said:

I always thought stop start was so they could cheat on the emissions testing/fuel economy figures lol

Six of one, half dozen of the other.

[WMDC35]

1 hour ago, Dose Pipe Sutututu said:

Stop start....

"saves fuel, good for environment", nothing about oil consumption because motor is never at temp, car battery consumption from constant stop/start events... 

And CVT's that "shift gears"

 

[GTSBoy]

37 minutes ago, WMDC35 said:

And CVT's that "shift gears"

 

Ah, but that's almost a good idea. It does away with the horrendous moo noise that most CVT 4cyl engines have.

[niZmO_Man]

On 09/12/2022 at 12:23 PM, GTSBoy said:

Ah, but that's almost a good idea. It does away with the horrendous moo noise that most CVT 4cyl engines have.

That's just the sound of efficiency

[joshuaho96]

9 hours ago, Dose Pipe Sutututu said:

Stop start....

"saves fuel, good for environment", nothing about oil consumption because motor is never at temp, car battery consumption from constant stop/start events... 

Surely it's not just stop-start as a concept that causes problems no? Otherwise decades of Priuses would show excessive bearing wear as those things are constantly turning the engine on and off. From what I've heard the MG1 spools the ICE up to ~1000 rpm with fuel/spark off until it builds oil pressure. Not sure how much that helps vs a conventional 12V starter spinning an engine at ~150 rpm with fuel and spark on.

[hardsteppa]

I use an Ultra-Racing one - its a 1piece design as opposed to the 3-piece design (which didn't give any noticeable change) that is more common. "difference" is hard to say but, when combined with these braces, forgotten what they're called

Yeah, did see a difference in how solid the front-end feels at highway speeds.

The top A-arm is towards the top of the strut tower and these arms do see alot of flex, as evidenced by the Cusco a-arm rubber bushes flogged out within a short space of time (hack tip, you can replace these with Superpro R33 rear control arm bushes trimmed to suit) so, tying the towers together will reduce flex. Without hardcore equipment like a chassis-rig to measure body flex under load it's going to be guesswork but, I drive this car every day under all sorts of varying conditions and try to keep in mind what's real and what's placebo....I think a solid crossbrace helps.