Chassis stiffness

Hi mate,

When I had my ford capri stripped out for a years worth of spriniting and hillclimbing, I added a roll cage and did feel an imediate benifit in the handling of the car. The capri being a similar shape, to a celica 3 door coupe, I would say you will find a real improvement in the handling. it was as if I had poly bushed the suspension all over again. However...the weight of the cage did blunt the performance. On a personal level, I felt I could drive the car harder with the cage in it as I did feel safer.

My personal feeling would be to fit the cage, but it does need to be welded in rather than just bolted to see the best gain.

 

I was thinking of stiffing the frame up using other methods. In the rear I was planning a strut bar, but also connecting it to the back of the car, somewhat like the front strut bar.

I think It would add in some more stiffness without the weight of a total cage

 

Good idea, I have seen a few cars with tri rear strut braces, the other area I would consider stiffening up is the b post, as the door openings are big, on later 205 models they have an extra section welded into the Base of the B post to stop flex, sure it would not be that hard to do!

 

If ESRacing doesn't chime in, shoot him a PM for the mods he did to his car to stiffen it up. I know alot of those mods are gonna be added to my car when I get to that point, but he has a little bit of everything(including a roll cage). I know he Autocrosses is blue car, and has even rallied it once.

 

Hey mafix, what would happen if you went to the back of the towers with the braces? And would there be a benefit to tying the towers at the top, then making a, "V" between, or in front of the strut towers?

 

What company makes that 5g brace?

 

def = definitely

according to eric it stiffened up his chassis considerably. He'd have to fill in the specifics though.

 

What does this bracket look like?

 

If you would like one similar to the alltrac ones, I can cut out the extra one that I have and you can scope it out with that if you wanted.

 

That looks really cool. I want something like that for my vert. It would def stiffen up the chassis considerably! I get so much side to side, that I can feel the body flexing around a corner. It's really strange to have any car flex that much... I was thinking about making one of these this spring anyhow. But if someone could fabricate one and sell it relatively cheap, that would be better...

 

I can verify this..i put a front and rear one on the echo and it helped considerably on the track.