Okay, well, i just got the strut bar thinking it would be a piece of cake, but it turns out the bar is about a half inch TOO LONG as it doesn't line up correctly.. I did a search and found a lot of people having problems installing it. I've had NO problems getting the bolts off. I took them all off basically. I then jacked the car up from the center, but nothing seemed to change much. I then jacked up the drivers side and again, no real difference or flex to really help the strutbar line up. What am i doing wrong?

-Rob

 

How old is your car? I've heared that one of the benefits of putting a strut bar on the car early in its life is so that it prevents the strut towers from comming closer together as it ages/flexes over time. In general, the longer you wait, the larger that gap becomes, and the harder it is to put a strut bar on.

 

ok, try this. take off all three bolts from each strut tower. then also take off the bolts for the stock strut bar but don't take that bar off. now jack up the car from the center until both front wheels start to get lifted off.

don't lift it too high or the whole suspension will drop coz' the strut towers are off. also make sure the parking brake is on.

this will give you the most flex on the car. if needed get a second person to shake the wheels a bit to see if that helps

 

yeah, I tried jacking from the center but the struts didn't seem to move. I jacked it pretty high but I don't think the wheels were off the ground. I didn't think i should jack it any higher, but I guess i can try it again. Will the jack be able to hold the car up like that though? without any kind of damage?

 

Damn, I didn't think it was this much trouble to install a damn strut bar. I thought it was a simple bolt on app, 5 minutes tops.

 

i helped nameeri install his neuspeed bar and you MUST jack up the entire front half of the car (tires must be off the ground) so you can loosen ALL nuts holding the struts. this gives you enough slack to spread the bolts to fit the holes in the bar. then twist the nuts back on and tighten after the car is back on the ground (i believe).

what we did was to jack up each corner using the tow hooks before placing jackstands under the normal jack point behind the front wheels.

 

couple of things. i believe in the manual (sorry i messed up between the lex and the acura again) says that don't jack up the car from the tow hook, coz' it's not suppose to suppor that much weight and it could bent.

if you look directly below the engine there is a piece of metal that's where you jack up the car from. it will hold the whole car

what kind of jack do you have? if it's a 2 1/4 tons jack that's all you need. your whole car isn't even that heavy.

and yes, you need to jack it up all the way till the wheels START to leave the ground. not like 5 ft high but jack it up till the wheels are off the ground.

and once you put the bar back, tighten up the bolts slight first. then lower the car back to the ground, and continue to tighten up teh bolts

 

When I installed the neuspeed front strut bar, I had to 1) loosen the bolts on the existing strut bar 2) jack up the FR and FL sides 3) let the car sit there for like 10 minutes. Then the new strut bar would fit with a bit of nudging and pounding. With the car on the ground, the strut bar extended about 1 inch pasted the end of the bolts. I guess the tolerance in distance between the 2 strut towers is marginal at best. It wasn't a 10 minute job like others have said. But I guess I get stuck with the bad luck. Just like how my tranny died at 5300miles, hehe...

 

Alright, i FINALLY got it on after all this time.

If you know what to do, it's a 10 minute job.

I basically took off all the bolts, jacked up the car from the center piece behind the bumper. Jacked it up ALL the way. (I didn't jack it up all the way the first time which is why it was frustrating).
But you gotta jack it up all the way. On mine, the tires didn't leave the ground, but I guess it was good enough, because the strut bar went on with ease.

But after all that trouble just to get it on, i feel no difference in steering or handling at all. I already have sways and springs, but i thought the strut would help improve the steering. It feels the same to me as before.

-ROb

 

There is already a strut bar on the TLs so the addition of the Neuspeed strut bar does not really help that much. I installed the Neuspeed on my TL-S also. No noticable difference. I also have springs and sways.

 

Yeah, i actually thought adding another strut bar would help it more. But it's like i wasted a hundred. Oh well. I "GUESS" it looks good under the hood, but i'm not into all that car show stuff.

 

glad that it finally worked so jacking it up more huh?

anyway, it did nothing abot handling for me, all for look. it did tightened up the steering a bit but that's all i could tell. well at least it's only 100 bucks