Last week I bought an upper rear strut tower brace for my car for $16. I was a little worried about fit/finish but after picking it up this morning and installing it I must say that I'm wildly impressed.

the bar is satin finished, not polished or chrome, meaning that it appears uniform and would hide any scratches that it's subject to.

The fit was great...it is one of the adjustable bars that has threaded ends. For the Evo, the end mounts screw all the way into the bar with only the width of the locking nuts separating the onchors from the bar. Because of this, the bar is locked tightly in place without any adjustment of the locking hardware. The install was easy and looks good...I'm finishing the install with vinyl trim and will post pics after that.


As far as performance, i drove my car and a stock-suspension Evo back-to-back and the difference is much more defined than I expected. The rear end snaps following abrupt in-lane swerving...cornering is much more flat out in the rear and pushing through an up-hill, off-camber, 90 degree turn actually caused a little tail-out motion that i've never experienced before.


overall i am extremely happy and needless to say, i think my $16 was well spent.

 

That's great to hear! I bought one of those as well, but it's been sitting on my shelf waiting to be installed. (too cold this past weekend) Post pics when you get a chance.

I bought an even cheaper one last summer that was actually for a Lancer (someone on here said that you could make it work with some mods.. NOT!). Anyway, I found it to be a perfect fit for a trunk bar (the lower brace that comes only on the EVO RS). Basically, you throw away the end brackets and just use the mounting hardware with the center bar section. Search my old posts for detailed pics if your interested.

 

woah, thats a great idea...i'll be checking it out. thanks a lot for the info!

 

Do you have a link; I see a couple differnet models out there and want to be sure I pick up the right one.

 

sure...

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/ws/eB...tem=7968718688

that's the exact one i bought. I think you can probably search his other items to find more (i saw 3 when i bought mine)

by the way...i paid on thursday morning and got the bar on saturday which was a very pleasant surprise

 

I have seen these things, also seen a demonstration where a vendor stood on one, bent straight to the floor. They are VERY cheap and really do nothing but add to looks IMHO.

 

eek. the design of that just lends itself to a cheap build.

 

I agree with netmand on this one.

I had a cheap ebay bar on my Integra, and swapped it out for a Skunk2, it made all the difference in the world.

 

bending a strut tower brace from the center proves nothing. the piece is intended to work in tension and compression to prevent the strut towers from tipping in toward each other or pulling away from each other.

at no time is a downward force applied to the center of the bar. if you are seriously concerned about the bar bending in the center then you can rotate it so that the widest dimension runs from top to bottom instead of front to back. flexural rigidity is a factor of the height of the bar, cubed. if your bar is 2 times as wide as it is tall then rotating it 90 degrees would actually make the bar 8 times more rigid than when the wide dimension runs from front to back. (Stand on the thin edge of a 2x4 supported at the far ends vs the wide edge)

ideally all of this would be moot, if the bar attaches to the strut towers at a 90 degree angle then the only forces applied by tipping struts would be compression and tension. since nothing is ideal, other forces apply but certainly not 200lbs in the center of the bar. if that was your concern then rotating the bar as described would go a long way toward increasing the rigity of the piece.


furthermore, i have only heard of 2 strut tower brace failures (both during autocross) and i heard about both secondhand. in both cases, the threaded ends actualy tore and pulled out of the bars, indicating tension as the force causing failure.


IMO, there's no need for a $200 or $300 strut brace. In fact, if it hadn't been cheaper to just buy one i would've made my own. and in the end it can also serve as a nice tiedown for my emergency breakdown kit. That thing becomes a 3 lb missle everytime i speed around a corner (with my strut tower brace keeping me flat-out) .

 

I agree w/Avengerhead. The thing works in tension/compression, so who cares whether it bends if someone stands on it laterally? Are the welded, one-piece ones like RMR sells stronger/better? No doubt about it. But are they $230 better? (10+ times??) Not for my money. If they'd sell them at a reasonable price (say, $50), I'd be happy to buy one... but this is just plain price gouging IMO.

Yeah, ceramic composite brake rotors would be better on the track too, but isn't iron good enough?

And if Avengerhead said that he was surprised at how much he noticed the results, why would you say that they're for show only? Obviously it did more than that.

The one I bought and used for the trunk bar was the same as the link you provided. The one I got for the strut tower brace was actually like this:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/ws/eB...spagename=WDVW

I figured the lower mounting bracket would flex a little less, plus it was cheaper.

 

thanks for the link.i just brought one of those.i feel the same way about it with both you and avengerhead.i just couldn't pay 150 for a bar that i'll probably wont tell the difference between the cheap one,and the name brand ones.

 

Please, if the bar bends, it doesn't support the stress. Whey does every other bar NOT bend?

 

I've got ebay bars on all of my eclipses, and I was dumb enough to buy a Greddy one before...needless to say, it was a waste. The Ebay bars work fine if you make them very snug and make sure the nut is super tight. In fact, I locktite'd mine and havent had any problem for years. In the Eclipse, they work especially well because its a hatchback. The cheap bars kept the hatch from rattling which was enough for me.

 

2 bad they dont make a 3 point front one polised or anything

 

the bar doesn't need to "support the stress" of a downward force. the brace is used to tie the top of the strut towers together to counteract cornering forces. since this application places the bar in tension the same feat COULD be accomplished with a steel cable BUT the bars do see compressing forces when the suspension absorbs the impact of road bumps.

once again, the fact that a vendor (no doubt selling his own, overpriced blingin' STB) stood in the middle of an aluminum bar means nothing in regards to the functionality of the piece.

what i can say is that under extreme stress, the holes used to attach the bar to the mounts COULD expand or warp, loosening the bar, you wouldn't see the same thing on a fitted Ti bar. Similarly, the threaded aluminum ends COULD fail or warp over time. Luckily with the Evo i can't see this happening since the mounts are screwed all the way into the bar. Utilizing every thread on the mounts and bar will go a long way to evenly distributing the forces.


even if, after 5 years of heavy autocrossing and suspension abuse, you need to replace one of these STBs you'll be shelling out another $10-$30. At that rate you could buy 8-20 more of the bars "just in case"

i dunno about you. but my car just feels like it corners better with an extra $200+ dollars in my bank account