Upper strut bars Rear and Front

[bmcgarvey at gmail.com (Brian McGarvey)]

Actually,
The Autotech has pivots. but once again The point is missed..

If I connect two dots with a large bar kinks or not the two points are
connected. The free body diagram doesnt care If I make a big squiggly
line.  The force applied to the compression is small. Im sure I could
figure out a way to actually measure it, but the tiny nuespeed bar
works just fine for that. It keeps the two points equidistant apart.

Also adding the pivots makes the system worse. the point is to keep
the compression and torsional forces in check. to keep the box in the
front square and non-deformed. our 1" pipe bar does an OK job at that.
the REAR roll bar makes the biggest differnce. To give you an idea..

no front or  rear bars rear. jack the car up. and the doors don't
open/shut well at all with the front end jacked up on one wheel ( 1-2
wheels off the ground)

add a front bar and jack the car up. gravity and mass are the only
forces here doors can be open / shut but are still mis-aligned (2
wheels off the ground)

No front bar add big ass pipe between rear tower (welded) and hoop
that is NOT connected to the floor pan. doors do open and shut with
the car jacked up similar height. (3 wheels off the ground)

bolt the roll bar down and add gussets. jacked up.. flat, whatever..
doors open/shut as good as they ever did (3 wheels off the ground)

So the rear roll bar is the dominate effect with the
the front strut bar would be a second order effect

You can feel. The reason the eurosport one might work better is it has
two tubes welded together for about 2' down the middle. so it resists
torsion. one tower moving forward, one tower moving backwards.. But
once again. I will say that your tires have way more give than the
front end. because if it didn't every one of you out there would have
dented/chipped hood to fender areas where the would rub. remember it
is a 1/4" gap that is 4' long along each side.

The BEST front end piece I can think of to bolt in would be and Boxed
X that joined the upper towers with each other, and to the opposite
side bottom. The rears control arm mounts are probably best as the
front frame horms would probably be deformed. The thin walled stucture
that makes up our cars is actually quite good, and springy.

If the best handling / performance / daily driving combination was a
solid box frame with no  twist, bow, flex, etc Pickup trucks would be
the best performing vehicles. massive power (torque and in some cases
HP too) and stiff ass chassis that doesnt give, of course assuming you
buy a real truck with a real chassis not a car with an open trunk..
oops did I say that outloud about the honda ridgline and other toyota,
uhm imported trucks... I've had caddliacs with more towing capacity.
The two door sporty version.. eldorado diesel.... 0..70 in a cloud of
smoke and 10 minutes.

Bigmac..




On 1/12/07, LEF <rocco16@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
> Sure can't argue with BMcG's theory.
>  The front strut bars (SB) have to clear the engine components, and in order to do so, must make several kinks.  Put one kink in a bar that must operate in compression or tension and the strength is reduced dramatically.  The front SB helps, don't get me wrong, but not nearly as much as it should/could.
> I have seen some designs, for other cars mostly, that utilize a straight bar and "pivots" at the strut tops.  This is a much better design, but not generally available on the market for A1 cars.
>
> larry
> sandiego16v
>
>
> Here is what I have to say about almost all the available cross braces
> that go on the upper portion of our struts or shocks. The are NOT
> big/strong enough to make a damn difference.
> _______________________________________________
> Scirocco-l mailing list
> Scirocco-l@scirocco.org
> http://neubayern.net/mailman/listinfo/scirocco-l
>