Driving Impressions: Lower Stress Bar

[Kirk]

Just two more photos to try to clarify things here. You should be able to see the Ernie Bar mounted up high, kind of behind the anti-sway bar. The eye bolt portion of the smaller, lower bars are mounted just below the Ernie Bar at the same mounting bolts that are used for the Ernie Bar.

BTW, these eye bolts make it MUCH easier to mount the bars as there is some adjustment then allowed. I know Franco didn't have much trouble with making his Ernie Bar, but I followed my classic rule of measure three times and still cut (or in this case, drill the holes) WRONG. It was a bit of a PITA to make this stuff. The Mantis Sport bar should be a LOT easier to mount, or I guess you could just drill the damn holes in the right spot to start with.... Either way, a big thanks to Mantis and especially insite for bringing this mod to everyone's attention!

Kirk B.

[chaudanova]

hey Kirk, great work!! Can you post your driving impressions?

[986rgt]

More pics of the "helper"!!!

[Franco]

Hi Kirk, lets begin with your hot assistant, please I've been married for 21 years and that's just painful for me.

Next, I didn't use the eye bolts because IMHO they would reduce the overall stiffness of the 3/4 bar, so I measured 6 times , scrapped a couple of bars and then Voila but I could be wrong (NOT) .

I understand your idea for the 2 extra bars , but after much reflection wouldn't it be a much more solid setup if we would just replace the OEM triangular plate with a 1/2 plate instead and get equivalent or better results, I'm sure some local machine shop with a water jet cutting machine can cut one out for about $60.00.

Looking forward to your thoughts on this and more pics of your hot assistant .

Thanks

Franco

[Kirk]

I don't have any solid driving impressions of this change yet, which I posted about over here:

http://986forum.com/forums/performance-technical-chat/12915-diy-rear-suspension-brace-post114410.html#post114410

At least there are no creaking or noise issues and the car feels solid and performs fine. I had it up to 112 mph this morning, no problems.

Franco, you're right that just a thicker plate would probably accomplish the same purpose, if not even better. You could also use solid flat bars instead of round to do the same thing and with less fabrication work. I'll have to take another look at the plate to see how much work would be involved with making a new one, but I imagine it's going to be a lot tougher than these lower stress bars. I know there are a couple air scoops that re-direct air up to the transmission for cooling that are attached to this plate, so that would have to be part of the design too.

As for the eye bolts... well they use the same kind of design on most upper strut bars, so I imagine it's stiff, but there is no question that making the Ernie Bar with one solid piece of aluminum is stiffer yet. I used the eye bolts on the smaller stress bars just because that was necessary to fit them into the slot where they mount and they made installation MUCH easier.

By request, here's another picture of my assistant showing off the hardware while wearing something a little more silky...

Kirk