Do strut braces work? or are they just for show?
 

As per title.

General feeling on "do they work ?" is a mixed one.
Some people swear that they can feel a differance and other dont !
Should therotically make more of a differance to the classic shaped than the bug / blob eyed models.

Richard

This what Prodrive guru Damian Harty had to say:

Strutbrace Q: There is an awful lot of mythology around this stuff that goes back to body-on-chassis beam-axled racers in the 20s - I'm not kidding. There are two effects that are important. Basically, the body structure is like a "fifth spring" between the front and rear suspension. If that spring is not stiff enough then the body relaxes out any redictribution of roll moment that the anti-roll bars were trying to make and so the car is unresponsive to handling balance tuning with springs and bars. However, once the body is "stiff enough" then making it stiffer offers no benefits. A good rule of thumb is that the torsional stiffness of the body (between suspension mount points) needs to be about ten times the roll stiffness of the stiffest suspension end (usually the front). If you chase the numbers through you end up with about 5-7 kNn/degree as the requirement for a body structure. Most modern monocoques comfortably exceed that and the Subaru with its bonded screens both ends does too. Somewhere I have a figure but can't recall it right now. Anything over 10 is good, 15-17 is current "state-of-the-art". So in that case, a strut brace does very little. The second effect is a bit more complicated. The body moves on the suspension but the wheel also moves on the tyre - the tyre is in many ways a "secondary" suspension system. That movement is partially controlled by the tyre and partially by the suspension damper and happens 10 to 15 times a second. The body is a flexible thing that has its own resonances and because of the shape of most cars at the front - they need a hole to put the engine in - it can get quite flexible in just about this frequency region. If the body goes flexible - goes into resonance - then the damper just moves with the body and can't contribute to the control of the tyre and in fact can do something bad called "mass loading" where the tyre is carrying not only itself but also part of the body _while it resonates_ (it's important to separate the static 'weight carrying' from dynamic things in your mind). In those cases, the strut brace can help because if it is a good design then it stiffens the front end usefully.

What all of the above means is that the effectiveness of a strut brace is strongly connected to the stiffness of your suspension. So for a Scoob that is fairly standard, the strut brace probably doesn't do a great deal, but as they get modified and stiffened the brace will contribute more to a well controlled feel over less-than-perfect surfaces.

The final point about strut braces relates to the emporor's new clothes - having bought a flash one, not many people will admit they can't really tell the difference.

Sorry for such a long answer but it isn't straightforward, especially when I'm denied my usual engineering shorthand of "Hz" and "modal damping" and so on...

also if you get **** on the front wing the SB transfers the energy and could right off the car

so there u go,on stiffly lowerd cars it does, on standerd soft ones its not so good

sti seam to fit them a lot,but the sti models are stiffern then the regular ones, so go figure ??

i noticed a big diffrence on my old novas, but they were all old and probably softer then a marshmallow

when i did the scooby i did upper front and rear and a lower rear at the same time, the problem was the day before i had upgraded to new 17" wheels and tyres and hadnt threw the car about as i was still in the "hooow fooken much for 4 tyres" phase

so yeah i could feel a big diffrence but how much was the wheels and how much was the 3 braces??

for what its worth, my cars lowerd a lot and is stiffer then a german porn star ;)

If you do fit one. Make sure you tell your insurance company, as it could invalidate your cover. Personally I think they do make a difference but just a small one. Spend the money on some driver training and get a bigger and more permanent benefit.

I cannot tell the difference between having them on or off so my conclusion FWIW is that there are more important things to spend money on and strut braces are well down the list unless tarting the car is more important than performance.

...gotta say I REALLY did feel a handling difference when I fitted a strut brace to my (Eibach spring'd) WRX MY02.

It actually firmed up the steering (made it heavier), losing some of the typical WRX-vagueness and imparting a greater feeling of control

IMO

It's all in the mind, if you've just spent £150 on a nice shiney strut brace you will think that there is a difference what ever car you drive.
I had one on my classic and could have sworn the car felt more "planted" round corners soon after I fitted it but only because I didn't want to think I had just wasted £100 :)

LOL at Danny
maybe, just maybe (but I don't think so) :)