my attempt at a front strut bar

[terry_240sx]

long story short,my ecu shorted out and i had to get towed home. my bumper made sure that i couldn't reach the tow hooks on the bottom of the frame, so we ended up using my strut tower bar.
so i decided that i will attempt to make another one out of some scrap square tubing i had laying around. lol

first my dad welded two pieces of 1/2 inch by 1/2 tubing together.


then i bent the two welded together tubes until they matched up to the bolts and cleared the top of my engine.



i then had to bend and make sure its actually level. (to the ground not necessarily to the engine lol)



then i bought some pipes and screws that fit tight in them, and welded those onto the ends of the newly made strutbar.

it was then i decided i might as well make braces to triangulate to the radiator support since i have leftover materials haha.
so i made brackets to bolt into one of the same locations of the pop up headlights on each side and welded them to a piece of the pipe. then welded the pipe to the strut bar and called it a night haha


I'll finish up all the welds, clean, and maybe primer tommorow after school and put some better pics up. :p

[OM3GA]

Very interesting.

[fiznowler]

Looks like you are doing a good job and I LOVE custom fabbed stuff so I am not trying to sound rude, but can't you buy that bar for super cheap on the interwebz? Either way I like the fact that it is something different!

[EnjoiNismo]

Awesome!
80% of people that have strut bars have the cheap ebay one that do nothing, I am in that 80% haha.

Can't wait to see a update on how its turns out!

[terry_240sx]

Looks like you are doing a good job and I LOVE custom fabbed stuff so I am not trying to sound rude, but can't you buy that bar for super cheap on the interwebz? Either way I like the fact that it is something different!

thanks man! haha
and yep i probably could but this is even cheaper because i already had the materials laying around.
and i did want to try to be different, i dunno if its a good or bad one. lol

80% of people that have strut bars have the cheap ebay one that do nothing, I am in that 80% haha.

i am also within this 80% haha

anyways, didn't have school today because there was so much snow which was weird. ( I live in southern California) so i worked on the strut bar(s) some more
my dad brought up that i might as well make a back one so they at least match. haha
so i made one

I also ground down all the welds on the top where you can see, but left the bottom ones in their welded glory to hopefully keep it strong. Then i primered them and left them to dry.
tomorrow after school (if there's not another snow day lol) i should be able to paint and install these things and put up some pics of the final product.

[terry_240sx]

snow!

[EnjoiNismo]

NICE! Looks great man.
What color you painting them :O!

[Lobo240sx]

I like people who think outside the box and get creative. Nice find and keep us updated on how it works. Looks excellent so far.

[terry_240sx]

NICE! Looks great man.
What color you painting them :O!

thanks man!
black. i was going to paint them white because i have tons of white paint, but it would just look dirty all the time haha.

I like people who think outside the box and get creative. Nice find and keep us updated on how it works. Looks excellent so far.

thanks to you too man!
i feel so accomplished haha.
i don't really think making these things was such a big deal at all but just that i was able to do it lol.
i would definitely recommend this for anyone who would want to make these.
anyways here are some final pics of them on the car.







oh yeah! i ended up making a random brace out of a small piece of straight aluminum from my tweaked strut bar haha.
it just connects to screws that were already there. i dunno how functional it would be but i figured i might as well.

[Razi]

You should make a tension brace that actually does something!

Nismo power brace:


I'm using Jonnie Fraz's bolt on one and it made a HUGE difference.
I put on my Cusco strut bars afterwards and I couldn't feel a change at all, I think it's because the braces aren't solid and the bolts on each end allow the chassis to flex still.

I wish I had a solid strut bar.
I might buy a Jonnie Fraz one someday.