Or How I Plan To Make My Own Upper Strut Brace; After following Wzabrouski's thread on "Rear Chassis Brace" and seeing Marks' slick M7 USB on Orangecrush, I decided I might take a shot at making my own. This will be a construction project I plan on performing over the next several weekends and I will take lots of pic's documenting the steps. Today, June 6th, 2010 Took Fungo down to the shop today. I started out by taking bolt hole pattern measurements of the strut towers. Created a cad drawing of the layout. It's much easier to add and make modifications to the design while on paper. After narrowing down the paper concept, I taped the image on a piece of light gauge steel, transferred all the bolt holes and cut out a test sample. This was used to verify all the hole locations. Some of the larger holes look like that don't line up. This is due to the angle I had to take the picture, they do line up. This last picture today is of the final design taped to a couple of pieces of 11 gage (.120") T304 stainless steel. If all goes well, these will be cut out bent and welded into RH and LH strut tower mounts for the cross bar attachment. That's it for today.
You would get a lot more out of an under body brace ala TSW than with this. These have shown very little to no benefit on our cars.
I spent a little time at the shop this weekend working on the strut brace mounts. They both are partially finished with the integral gusset bent in place. The second attachment point gussets still need to be made and welded onto the plates. Here's the result of Sunday's effort.
Well...... today I finally got around to finishing up the strut brace I started some time ago. It's all T304 stainless steel. I figured it would be nice to have this done in time for my trip to MSSD. Here are some pics. I changed the end plates slightly from my last post. I was going to make it so it could be quickly disassembled, but felt the one piece construction was much stronger. So I eliminated the adjustment feature some bars have. There are a couple other changes I am thinking about and if I go with them I'll post additional pics.
Metal, I want one of those. I am going to have to buy stuff now before the babies get here! LOL What would something like that run? PM!
Thanks for all the comments..... This is just one of those projects where I had some left over scrap from a job. Spent a little time taking careful point to point measurements and transferring it over to an auto-cad program. This allowed me to run off full size 1:1 paper plots and with scissors and tape making quick mockups for verification. Made some thin gauge metal templates that then allowed me to take accurate strut to strut measurements. Transferred everything over to 11 gage (1/8") stainless thereby adding extra strength to counter "Mushrooming" (although this problem may have already been resolved with the R56 design, as I don't seem to find this as an issue anymore???). Grabbed some 1" x 16 gage SS tubing for the cross bar. Put it all together today when I had some extra time (yes, all the welds are Tig welds). Was a little worried about under bonnet clearance. Solved this with a can of "Great Stuff" shot in a plastic baggy (sealed the open end) and laid the growing blob on top of the bar at the highest point. Closed the hood and let the polyurethane do its stuff. After it hardened, I cut through the thinnest cross section and got an accurate clearance dimension. At this point, I have no plans to make any more of these or sell them. It was just fun doing.
I found some nice matt finish black nylon snap in hole covers that fit the 2-1/2" holes on top of the strut towers. Rated at 250F. Good for preventing critters from nesting in my strut towers.
Ooh, where did you get these? Those would be awesome for keeping the bearings on my vorschlag plates clean.