let's talk chassis bracing

[Numbchux]

yea, it's been said that a strut tower brace on the front will drastically help with chassis flex, and therefore handling. I also have a pair of aluminum fender braces for an impreza that I intend to use on my wagon (when I get motivated enough to pull my fenders......don't hold your breath )

 

 

but I've been thinking about the rear. many wagon owners talk about how much a rear strut tower brace helps, and I've been looking at my car, trying to decide how best to do this....empty-handed of course.

 

my only success was finding cool pictures of some custom braces....like this for a GC impreza, that still allows the use of the rear seat:

 

 

then it occured to me.....the rear suspension is already very well tied together due to the trailing arm design. I don't think that turning forces really exert much force on the rear of the body (between the 2 sides anyway, I'm sure a full roll cage to tie the front to rear would help....but that's a whole different can of worms).

 

 

 

am I making sense? thoughts?

[baccaruda]

that's a good point; a good stiff rear sway bar and a quality shock/spring setup willl do a lot for these older cars. You might do best to first focus on stabilizing the car front to back?

[monstaru]

a brace between the rear will do wonders also.granted the rigidity of a wagon is pretty good,but think of the body roll factor.does that make sense?i guess what i mean is if you put a brace in the rear and ran it straight across it would make it possible to tie into .you could just build a cage much like the one in the photo right behind the seat non -intrusively and have it extend rearward to the strut top area.then you achieve front to back and left to right.this limits your fold down seat option for space , but if your gonna do it there is going to be concessions anyway.

cheers, brian

[4x4_Welder]

You ought to see the difference made by putting an x-brace under the car, from the rear of the front subframe to the rear suspension mounts. Every car you ride in after that will feel like it's a giant spring.

[Snowman]

Because the rear suspension on the EA cars is not an actual Macpherson strut setup (where the struts actually handle the side to side stabilization), bracing the rear isn't nearly as big of a deal. I would focus more on the front.

[cobcob]

How big of an issue would running an X brace under the car be if you needed to yank the transmission later? Not having pulled a trans out of these cars myself I'm clueless.

[NorthWet]

Because the rear suspension on the EA cars is not an actual Macpherson strut setup...

Just to be a smartalec , none of the Subarus I have seen use an actual Macpherson Strut anywheres. True Macpherson Strut (named after the developing Engineer at Ford) uses the anti-roll bar as the fore-aft locating link. I have seen it only once, and on a Mazda (Ford influenced). The fronts are modified-Macpherson Strut. Rears are just semi-trailing arms with a shock-concentric coil-spring.

 

Back on topic, I like 4x4 Welder's recommendation for the fore-aft cross-brace. I know one of the improvements to the early US unibodies for racing was simple fore-aft reinforcers to keep the bodies from folding up.

[Numbchux]

Just to be a smartalec , none of the Subarus I have seen use an actual Macpherson Strut anywheres. True Macpherson Strut (named after the developing Engineer at Ford) uses the anti-roll bar as the fore-aft locating link. I have seen it only once, and on a Mazda (Ford influenced). The fronts are modified-Macpherson Strut. Rears are just semi-trailing arms with a shock-concentric coil-spring.

 

technicality

 

 

 

yep, already working on the front, but since that design is very similar to EJ stuff, it's really not new territory.

 

and yea, I was thinking about some subframe connectors to stiffen the length of the unibody.