Neither have I. I put one on the car and didn't notice a damn bit of difference, except for an additional 40 lbs of front downforce.

I should probably sell it.

 

Sorry, I did not realize you had good experience with this, no offense

Have you ever looked to see if you have shock tower deflection? Maybe I am over paranoid about this.

I took an 18" crescent wrench and tried to lift the tower up and down with my full 200 lbs on the tower and the deflection was only @ .015"

Here is what I did.
http://forums.corvetteforum.com/show...7&goto=newpost

 

None taken. So I read the older thread, why did you build the new shock towers? Were they damaged / rusted, or were you simply looking for a stronger load-bearing area with the coil-overs? I don't have much experience with the older C4's, so I'm not sure if they're the same as the LT1 cars or not.

Anyway, I've been working my car over for six years now on stock mounts and the only issue I have seen is a broken rear knuckle due to the loads going exclusively through the shock mount instead of the old spring location.

I've never actually measured front tower deflection, but others have and reported nothing significant. There was a long thread a year or so ago with someone building their own Camber brace and he did a bunch of testing. In addition, my alignments don't wander and careful inspection before each race shows no cracking or bending (at least none visible). My car is quite neutral at this point, it took a lot of work in the rear suspension to eliminate all the understeer. Nothing at all done to the front except the coil overs and a serious alignment.

I don't want to get into bashing the camber brace, as RD is a great company and a strong CF supporter, but that is one product that I'm quite vocal about being a waste of money...it's a "feel good" mod that non mechanically inclined people can install themselves and say they have a modified Corvette...

 

camber brace makes a world of difference on any C4.

 

Nice...better yet, throw it in the trunk of the car for better weight distribution.

 

Have any data?

 

I do not auto cross. Only evidence i have is jacking up the car is totally different. Much stiffer, plus the car feels much more solid up front than without the brace. And I have a complete new suspension on my car too. I do not see how anyone cant notice a differnce.

 

That's exactly what I said. The difference in our opinions is that stiffer is NOT better.

 

There is so much understeer, don't do anything to make to worse. I will not add that much weight to the car without clear data showing better track times.

 

This is a first. Any time I've criticized it, a bunch of SOTP racers got all worked up and tried to change my mind.

"It feels like a whole new car... etc."

I guarantee I drive my car harder than most in the corners, and more often, and I didn't notice a bit of difference.

The only thing it does, is resist camber change under load by supporting the shock towers. And the shock towers don't even carry the weight of the car! They see some side load during cornering (but the other side sees an opposite force)

How this translates into "feeling like a whole new car", or even has any effect on jacking the car up is beyond me.

I've never seen anyone measure this deflection. I think it'd be relatively easy to do... simply bolt an arm across the car and guide it so that it scribes onto a 2nd piece on the other attachment point. Drive the **** out of the car, then measure the maximum movement. Then calculate how much camber change this causes.

 

I agree. Stiffer is not better. But having the front end of any C4 wabble and shake like its going to fall apart if the car is traveling over train tracks, rought roads, or anything besided a smooth paved road is very obvious and noticeable. The camber brace makes about 90% of that go away.

Im sure others will chime in.

 

I think the camber brace helps correct a quality problem with the C4 platform.

Althought a great car for its time, the C4 platform has many flaws. Known to sit higher on one side than the other, excessive front end/body wabble over rought roads just to name two major ones.

GM did a great job of correcting these issues with the C5 and C6 platforms.

 

Well, the 85 towers are very narrow and only .125 thick, and from what I was told the newer towers are 1/32 or more thicker, wider openings and obviously stronger.

When I decided to make new towers I figured I would rather go thicker to a 3/16" thick but the steel company only had 1/4 thick, so I went with it and the added benefit would be a very strong shock tower.

 

hi guys,
i have a camber brace installed on my zo7 1991 vette with lowered drm coil overs and all i can say is what a big difference in the feel of the front end for sure!
when you take a corner hard, it felt less woble in front end,more firm,felt more safer and i could really notice the differnece !
so i love this mod with out a doubt!
cheers
glen
Australia

 

About a year or 2 ago I posted here on a camber brace thread -that I could not see how it would do anything-and got flamed. Glad to see it different today.

I Roadrace (timetrials) my 1992 at Pocono and Limerock without one and it is fine! And yes it is driven hard!

Steven

 

It's to much weight for no gain. I'd be happy to test one at the track but I won't spend that much on it without clear data it helps. Someone with a datalogger could test it, that'd be interesting.

 

nevermind...

 

All I know is that if I measure between the upper a-arm mounting points with the car on the ground and then jack the front end of the car up in the middle of the engine cradle and measure again...the change is ~1/4". The Camber Brace ties the upper a-arm mounting points together and eliminates that twist/flex. That the measurement stays the same with the Camber Brace in place is a fact.

Move the top of either front wheel outboard or inboard up to 1/8" and to me that's a pretty significant impact on the alignment during hard cornering. Hell, even a 1/16" of an inch is a lot given how camber challenged C4s are to begin with.

I should note that my GS has Global West solid aluminum a-arm bushings with a thin del-a-lum insert. This means I'm not fighting OEM rubber or aftermarket poly bushing slop. Frankly bushing slop is as bad or worse than the frame flex.

If someone wants to pay a few thousand dollars to rent a track for me for a couple of hours such that I can get in clean (no traffic) laps with and without the Camber Brace I'll be more than happy to test it and post the results.

Of course one can set their alignment to compensate for chassis flex to some extent although how the frame will react in a given situation is not consistent. The Camber Brace removes some of that variability.

We can all agree on one thing...Some like it and some don't. To each their own. Now the throttle body airfoil....

 

I made a shock tower brace for my C3 from 2 pieces of angle and an aluminum adjustable rod and clevis ends I bought from a performance parts store. It barely weighed 3 lbs. and significantly changed the handling of the very flexable C3 front end. Solid motor mounts also stiffened the front. The C3 will flex so much, a lot of them develop cracks in the shock towers.

The C4 seems much stiffer yet I do see the shock towers flex out when it is on stands. Who makes shock tower braces for the C4? I need to see if I can fab a similar brace like the one I made for the C3.

I can understand the concern for understeer that might be increased by a tighter front end, but that can be conpensated for by changing the rear sway bar to allow the rear to break sooner. Most C3s came without a rear sway bar and adding a really stiff one would let the rear break too soon.

All-in-all, I would think you would want to start with as stiff a chassis as you can make it, that is what the pro racers do, then create a suspension that works with the chassis.

I state this, not to contradict, but to learn more from those that might have more experience in these areas. Keep up the dialogue so we all might benefit!
Bernie