|
Okay, here's my simplistic take on the strut bar issue. Remember Newton's Third Law:
"For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction."
Now imagine that you are looking at your engine bay from the top without the hood. The strut bar towers can be seen from above. Pretend that the O's are the front strut towers.
O......O
and by bracing those towers together, we are minimizing body flex by preventing inward displacement:
-->O....O<--
and outward displacement:
<--O.........O-->
Now I know I haven't answered your question yet, Elaine, because I know you know all of this already.
Now if you were to weld and attach both strut towers together with straight 4130 chrome moly tubing, you would effectively prevent the body from flexing inwardly and outwardly, right?
The problem is that the engine is in the way, so you must put a bend in the tube. So the next questions you may ask yourself are "how rigid is the strut brace?" and "how would bending the bar affect rigidity?"
More importantly, it is not practical to weld a solid piece to the strut towers, so we must be able to attach and detach the strut bar. So now look at the attachment points. You'll have to agree that these are the potentially weak points of the design. The OEM strut bar that Long and I have utilize fairly thick (I believe they are 8mm) bolts with hexagonal heads and/or torx. However, the bar is hollow (good for being light). The design seen in this thread seems to use solid aluminum, but it's in three pieces. I would be most concerned about the bolts that are used to attach them. Will they loosen in time with body flex?
|