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The rear crossmemeber brace really stiffens things in bending and torsion. This is a pretty heavily loaded part of the crossmember.
Looking at the bigger picture really shows how the triangulation is. Driving the car after the installation of the braces really surprised us. Since the FR-S is a pretty stiff car from the factory we didn’t think the braces would make that big of a difference. We were totally wrong, the braces made a marked difference. The car rides much smoother, even with our stiffer KW suspension the ride is greatly improved over stock. The difference was night and day. Our car actually feels almost plush for a sports car. When we get to the track and do some suspension tuning we know it will be a lot more responsive to adjustments with our added chassis stiffness. We would recommend getting all of the Cusco braces, including the ones we installed earlier. We guarantee you will be pleased with the results.
We next added a few parts from Kartboy. Kartboy is well known in the Subaru world and they are also making parts for the FR-S/BRZ. We installed a set of their much needed rear swaybar end links. The Kartboy parts are made of strong forged aluminum with hard urethane bushings and replace the very spindly stock links.
We had concerns that the stock end links might give trouble with larger swaybars. As you can see when compared to the Kartboy parts, the stock endlinks are pencil like with tiny looking welds. Pencil like might be generous!
The Kartboy links went right in and are the right length for proper rear swaybar geometry. No worries about flex or breakage anymore.
Normally we are the anti short shifter guys. Typically we have found that short shifters are too short and result in beating the syncros, bending shift forks and generally placing more wear and tear on the transmission. Super leveraged out shifters greatly increase shift effort. Short shifters we have experienced in the past also tend to bind, buzz and vibrate. All of these things have turned us off in the past. Tom “Kartboy” Deadrick insisted that we would like his shifter and we were hesitant but when we opened the box and started to inspect the parts we felt better. The Kartboy shifter was very well made and the reverse lock out mechanisms was solid. The pivot and lower bearing quality exceeded that of the OEM part.
