Camaro Rear Shock Tower Brace worth it?

[jknight16]

Hi all, I'm curious if anyone has any thoughts on the effectiveness of a rear shock tower brace on a first gen Camaro. Hotchkis sells this one: http://www.hotchkis.net/19681969_camaro_firebird_rear_shock_tower_brace.ht ml

I'm going to be using the factory shock mounts with my composite leaf/watt's link rear and was considering fabbing my own version of this brace, but wanted to see if you guys thought it was even worth doing. My gut feeling is that it's not going to provide enough benefit to warrant purchasing one, but if it'll only cost a few bucks to make, why not....

[John Wright]

I was looking into fabbing up something similar for my car(early 2gen camaro). My opinion is anything that helps stiffen the platform or helps resist flexing has to be benificial and lets the suspension do it's job vs wasting energy by twisting up the car.

Here is another version of something to help tie in that area of the car back to the subframe.

Thread over on another forum where I asked about this:

http://www.nastyz28.com/forum/showthread.php?t=103368


Lowend had posted a link to this:

http://www.track407.com/page05.html


What made me really think about this was taking my back seat out and noticing that the sheetmetal behind that seat was flemsy and had noticable places where it had moved over the years. ie factory paint/overspray lines

[jknight16]

Interesting links. I agree with you that anything that can be done to stiffen these unibody cars is a worthwhile undertaking.

However, my concern is, will the forces being applied to the shock mounts actually be negated or countered by a brace of this sort. It seems like the relatively vertical forces being applied through the shocks to these mounts wouldn't be affected much by a horizonal brace.

Of course I'm no engineer, so that's why I'm asking you guys.

[Jim Nilsen]

Look at what Dave Pozzi did to Bad Penny and that way you can prepare for changes that will come down the road. You said you are looking at going with Watts link and the packaging I would think will end up similar before you are finished.

[98ssnova]

Yes

[Lowend]

It's a good idea; but I think the Track 407 setup is a better design.
any time you can triangulate you are better off

[barraza]

If the purpose is to lighten your wallet, it'll work fine. Make the suspension work better, not a chance. The loads through the shock mount are in the vertical plane, attaching the two mounting points together does nothing to help. It could be argued that it would be better if the reinforcement anchored to the inner wheelwell, but the area doesn't flex with a shock load anyway. In the old days, it was common to support most of the weight of the car with air shocks, using the original mounts, and they worked just fine as long as they weren't rusted. Save your time and money.

[Rod]

I put one on my car, at an event to feel if there was any change, and from just seat of the pants driving, at the autocross event I couldn't feel any difference, there might be some measurable changes, but at low speeds at autoX the car had no discernible handling changes, but it looked good

https://static1.pt-content.com/images/pt/2010/02/GEDC0601small-1.jpg