I'm amazed. The bars are hollow. Think wall diameter, think material quality. Understand a process before you criticize. Welded joints can be stronger than the metal itself. More is not always better. When you are out partying and you get hammered is one more drink gonna make you have more fun? Somebody remove your hood and mount a video/digital camera and see how much the thing flexes. Be skeptical!

 

bhall01:
Perhaps the welds themselves are not 100% bad, but having the strut tie bar connected to other parts of the frame is. A well designed strut tie bar should only connect to the frame at the strut. That is my beef with the OEM bar, it is connected in two additional places under the wipers onto the frame. That is a no-no

 

copland007

Why is that bad? Please provide some resemblance of proof. I'm not saying it isn't bad and I'm not saying that's the way it ought to be either. I'm only saying make statements based on something other than opinion. Technical drawing, case study, pics of damage were it's been done before, just something. Because I heard something from someone else or I think it is wrong is baseless in my opinion. I believe if we lead by example by showing our intelligence then the aftermarket world will follow and provide us with quality product. JMO

 

Like I said earlier in this post I am by no means a mechanical engineer, I’m a computer engineer , but I'll give it a shot. It is also very late, so sorry if this is incoherent

The strut tie bar as intended is supposed to be designed to reduce/remove the flex between the strut towers in your car. This is idealy achieved by a very rigid, thick one piece constructed pipe which has points of contact directly on the strut towers. The tie bar for all intensive purposes makes the two individual strut towers function as one when an opposing force is applied to one or the other side. The towers bending in and out are what the tie bar is designed to eliminate/reduce. If you attach this tie bar to additional anchor points in the car you are effectively reducing the tie bar's ability to perform by means of any other body flex gets applied through these extra anchor points to the tie bar as well as the flexing of the strut towers during hard cornering. This works both ways, energy being applied to the tie bar unintentionally by these extra anchors, and the distribution of flex to each of the strut towers is slightly lost in these anchor points.

Why is that bad? The tie bar is designed to treat forces which are applied to one strut tower as if both strut towers were one. This is important for maintaining traction and optimal wheel to road contact during hard turns. So if the tie bar is anchored to more than just the strut towers, some of the dispersed energy which is meant to be applied to both towers is getting diverted to these unnecessary anchor points.

I think this post is getting long, and me tired Thank you bhall01 for taking an objectionable viewpoint with construction criticism instead of just flaming me down. Makes for a good thread!

Did any of this make sense? Anybody else want to chime in, did I miss something or get something not quite correct?

-copland007

 

bhall01:
"I'm amazed. The bars are hollow. Think wall diameter, think material quality. Understand a process before you criticize. Welded joints can be stronger than the metal itself."

Uhmm...bhall01 welded joints USUALLY are the weak points in any metal structure. It's the welds that break free first. Most any mech. engr. can tell you that. I learned that when helping build the suspension for my solar car team.

copland007:
Heh heh a fellow comp engr to your rescue...you're totally right. Let's say you have your two strut towers, and a third and fourth independent points by either strut. Now when the strut towers flex inward, you have tension from both sides of the bar. With the stock bar...you have tied these to independent points, so you may not have this same tension...or worse you may have different tension caused by these independent points than you would not want present. It's very simple to see that the best design would be one that only affected the strut towers, and the stock situation does not. I think copland007 took care of all this in his post though...so I don't really need to reiterate...good job copland007

Austin519

 

remember that if it doesn't bent it could crack or break.