Like many of you I want to make my car faster and handle better without spending tons of money. So I'm always looking for cheap and easy mods. I think I came up with a good one this weekend and I'd like your feedback as a group.
I've felt for a while now that the stock front strut braces are pretty good. I've even gone so far as to remove mine and examine them. When I saw this post by Loren on Renntech it got some thoughts going:
http://www.renntech.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=5678
Of course this applies to the Boxster as well as the 911 Carrera as we have the same front end and both cars have the same strut tower braces as the GT3 Cup Car! Here's the drawing from Loren's post as well as a photo of one of the bars in my 2000 Boxster S where it mounts to the strut tower on the passenger side.
The only problem with this setup IMHO, which became readily apparent when I took mine out, is that the mount at the firewall is a single point that allows movement and rotation. It seems to me that it would be a lot stiffer if the two bars were tied more directly together towards the shock towers or in the middle. There's just enough space behind the battery that you could tie them together in the middle and stiffen up the structure. But how to clamp a bar across the two strut tower braces to hold them together? Well here's the solution that my son (16 yrs old) and I came up with this weekend during a little father/son time together:
Basically what you're looking at is one of my main lower stress bars for the Boxster/Cayman (group buy in the Classified section) that I adapted to fit the front strut braces and clamp them together using some custom brackets. With everything snugged up it's VERY tight and rigid. The brackets and bar don't move a bit. With the way the bar is designed you can turn it to put tension either pulling in or pushing out on the strut tower bars, or you can leave it neutral. I put tension pushing out to keep the bars from flexing inwards under hard cornering.
The bar is low enough that it still fits under the stock plastic covers too.
My son had the job of polishing up the custom brackets. I think he gets kudos for a job well done.
The bar is the same steel bar used for the lower stress bar. I just painted this one red to make it look pretty. The heim joints are also the same super beefy ones used on the lower stress bar. So this setup should be good for holding something like 4 tons...
So what do you think???