What does this accessory do? Will it do anything to improve the steering torque in the xA? Thanks.

Ken

 

tie down? you mean strut tower bar? basically they reduce flex during hard cornering. When you turn a car's strut towers flex, which makes your cars body flex which maes you lose some traction. STBs keep your strut towers from flexing, instead of pressure given to one strut when turning, it applies it to both instead of one. So it keeps your tires in position, thus making more traction during corning. I drive alot of togues, I ordered the Tanabe Sustec STB and took it to my local spot for a quick test run and handling was definately better!! Turn in felt much more tighter (not understeer tight) but you'll get alot of mixed reviews about the strut tower bar, some will say that it doesn't do anything but look good, and there are those like me that say that it looks cool, and improves handling. IMHO those who say it just looks cool doesnt take their car through turns hard enough to even notice a difference, but when you're going through you're local togue road taking sweepers at 60+ and tight turns at 35+ you'll definetely feel a difference in handling. Even pushing it a little on those freeway entrances that are like C's. So...simply put, if you're just gonna drive around to the store or wherever, don't bother getting one, taking that sweeper on the way to school going 45 isn't much. But if you plan on taking you're car auto-x, road racing, togue racing....then get it. Oh and you'll also hear the struts are already rigid as they are being so close to the firewall...my answer...whats wrong with more rigidty?

 

I don't know if you guys realize it but if the strut towers flexed to the amount you guys imply, you'd be scraping the paint off the hood when the fenders hit it. Also, the amount of flex necessary in the tower to deflect the tires enough to affect traction would have to literally be inches .

Looks good....that's it.

Johncal

 

Strut tower bars DO make a difference. BELIEVE ME!! Ive been racing for about 4 years now and everyone i know that runs from an 84' VW Fox to the newest 05' BMW M3, use strut tower bars. Why would anybody say that these dont do anything if everyone in the circuit racing community buys them? The more rigid your car is the better, but you dont want to over do because some flex can and will help you through those corners.
I raced my xA without a strut tower bar, then with an aerospeed tower bar, slight difference but that tower bar is crap, then i switched to the DC Sports and DAM!! Now we have a difference, you can feel it in the first turn of the steering wheel when your coming into the corner, you feel that the body is in its place and doesnt roll as much.
When it comes down to torque steer, your screwed. You have a front engine front wheel drive car, there is NOTHING you can do about that, except learn to live with it and cope with the torque steer.

 

like gnar said, it subject to the drivers style, gnar and JSosa drive their cars hard, strut bars are made for hard driving not driving around taking turns at the whopping speed limit that the sign states, so obviously with the latter in mind the sturt bar wont make a difference at all, whereas you'd feel more solidity in you're car if you were taking the turn hard or at high speed. With all due respect, if you look at johncal's car and what's been done to it, it doesnt seem like it see any hard driving at all.