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Ron Stygar Carl Buckland Dale Beuning Forums Help
From digest.v6.n858 Tue Jul 8 06:01:53 1997 Nathan with an E28, recently posted a Q re strut tower braces, how are they connected, etc. My recent experiences with my E30 M3. Bought an Eibach brace from Eurasian. (I've never had any difficulties with them.) I think that the price was approx. $170. Brace is a polished aluminum tube of fixed length (no adjustment possible) secured to two mounting plates. Installation is, or should be, straightforward. With car resting on its wheels, remove three nuts on top of each strut tower. Place mounting plate over studs. Replace nuts and torque 'em. (On my car stud patterns are different right to left, so mounting plates can only be installed one way.) Secure brace to one mounting plate with supplied hardware. Repeat on other side. You're done. My installation was more complicated. One stud was slightly bent. Solution: Put nut on stud and tap, tap, tap to straighten. (I know I weakened the stud slightly, but it was probably already slightly weak in bent form. Had to move it about 1/16 inch. An acquaintance far more knowledgable than I told me that I could probably get away with this because these studs are not really load bearing. They are more for positioning.) Next the brace wouldn't fit. The tops of my strut towers were approx. 1/8 to 3/16 too close. Body had already "flexed" out of factory spec. I scratched my head for a while on this one. Solution: Place floor jack deep under car to catch frame and jack it up. Body flexed the right way, and I was able to get the brace properly installed. Next step was replacing worn tires and getting alignment checked. No problems. Result: Big difference. Car feels stiffer and tighter. |
