Strut Brace

[yaris_girl]

Whats the best ones to get? Theres a 'rear upper' strut brace on eBay - is it worth gettin?

[earpl]

yes deffinately

[jaxx]

yes

im my experience the yaris suspension and handling is dire!

braces help stiffen up the body nicely and with a good spring/shock setup, your starting to enter go-kart land!

[earpl]

i cant believe how much stiffer mine is.

[yaris_girl]

It's made of steel - am i better off with an alloy 1, due to the weight difference or does it not really matter?

[earpl]

if its an omp one the weigh bugger all, it its being sold by strutbracer, buy one direct from www.strutbracer.co.uk as its about 5 quid cheaper

[b1nda]

I ordered a front upper strut brace from strutbracer on friday,...its going to be delivered on monday morning....is it worth getting a rear lower strut aswell?...i dont want a rear upper as i use my boot quite alot on my yaris

[clarky]

I have an Envy lower brace and the difference was less noticeable than the upper ... but it all adds up.

The front upper and rear upper are really worthwhile ... but at the end of the day the lower front was only 45quid ...

[b1nda]

can u mix and match strut braces? because im going to put a opm strut brace on the front and have also ordered another make for the rear, but they are the same material.

[Woody27]

Of course you can mix and match! you could possibly argue that you could have varying stiffnesses of the braces, but thats pure nonsense as the different areas have different stiffnesses anyway (front and rear zones have different stiffnesses and so varying the improvement (different make braces) wont matter)! (i may have just backed up my point with poor english but i trying to say something without causing and argument (which is proving ever harder!)

Tired - Woody

[clarky]

Hope you can max and match ... I have.

Cant see it being an issue - a few folks on here have tried my car and commented on the way it handles .. so I guess it must be ok

[Al J]

An interesting thread. Can someone please explain just how the handling characteristics are altered? I know it's probably not that simple to describe but would a front strut brace (no other mods to suspension, say) affect the understeer of the car, for example?

[clarky]

Not sure about understeer .. depends on a lot of conditions.

But - the most noticeable difference for me with just the front upper was powering out of a roundabout - much more direct and more in control.

[CAMSHAFT]

i should be fitting mine sometime this week, i have had them on other cars and they did the job, so i let ye know what its like

[jaxx]

An interesting thread. Can someone please explain just how the handling characteristics are altered? I know it's probably not that simple to describe but would a front strut brace (no other mods to suspension, say) affect the understeer of the car, for example?

←

when stood still a car is sat in its perfect geometrical form, just how it was designed, and everything is all pointing in the right direction and the wheels are aloigned up perfectly with the road surface

on cornering, the bodywork flexes, in particular the suspension strut tops as the have direct feedback back to the ground, no most cars are just made of thin steel believe it or not and flex very well under heavy force

as the strut tops flex this forces the geometry out of wad and can take away grip from the tyres as force is diverted away from them and into the body

a strut brace helps keep everything rigid and where it should be, helping keep things in the places they belong, and helping the angle of the wheels stay as they should be to get full contact on the road

[CAMSHAFT]

as rob said ^^^^well explaned

[earpl]

imagine trying to sit on top of a big card board box with no sides? flop :P

theres that much rigitity in mine now i've popped the two fron centre caps out of my wheels :P

[clarky]

You lost another one?

[earpl]

yeah both fronts :( one going round the police headquarters roundabout at riply (about 45 mph) and one down 13 bends, bakewell to baslow.

[Moffmo]

car without strut brace turning right (Picture is of the suspension struts)

\ \

Car with:

| | (Wouldnt be as stiff as that i imagine lol, but you get the idea)

[clarky]

And theres a front lower in the forsale section...

[minidoughty]

but the one in the for sale section is more expensive than from the site above????

[clarky]

By a whole 50p!

[Al J]

Thanks to those who answered my particular question. Rob, you get the award for the clearest answer but I liked earpl's floppy box idea too. Cheers.

I like the idea of go kart cornering. I used to kart in my teens. Wouldn't want as stiff a ride as those though. My vision was blurred for the first few minutes!

So... someone's gotta say it. Why don't they fit them as standard then?

[jaxx]

HTH buddy

suppose its not a cost effective thing to do for the manf.

some cars do have them though, the mr2 has one across the chassis/bulkhead to the rear struts

but thats probably more due to the setup of the engine....