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Brace your brick on the cheap 200

This has been already done by untold hundreds of members of the BB, but I thought I'd supply my parts list as well as a couple of (bad) photos of my work.

I managed to brace my brick for under 5 bucks with parts from Lowes.

I bought 10' of 1/2 EMT conduit, four 6mm grade 8 bolts and split washers and nylock nuts, two 8mm grade 8 bolts and split washers.

The holes were already there on my control arm mount and cross member, which is why I used the 6mm bolts.

The only tools I needed were my drill, a 5/16" bit, a 1/4" bit, and my bench vise to flatten the pipe and bend it. A pipe saw to cut the conduit. I used my dremel tool with a cutoff disk to neatly round the ends, but it's not necessary.

Took me about two hours to do upper and lower.

Here's a photo of the lower.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3560/3368812865_6cf8337871.jpg


Here's a photo of the upper.
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3462/3369638156_8dc2bedac6.jpg



The lower has both flat ends on the same plane, so they're pretty easy to make. They require 1/4" holes to be drilled using the 6mm bolts.

The upper requires a bit of eyeballing in terms of what angles to bend at. I flattened the top part that mounts to the fire wall. I bent it and then held it in place on the car until the tube was as the appropriate angle to the strut tower. Then I marked the plane I'd need to flatten for the strut tower end of the pipe. I drilled 5/16" holes in the upper braces.

Everything fits snug, and here's my final report:

My car is 100% stock with 135k miles on it. Original shocks, bushings, everything. The results are that my car runs smoother down the road. The car handles noticibly better. The engine doesn't shake as much on shutdown. Best 5 dollars I know how to spend on a 240, and pretty easy to knock these out in a couple hours.






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New 10 Brace your brick on the cheap [200]
posted by  Luke H  on Fri Mar 20 03:57 CST 2009 >


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