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We had Brian Kono of Afterhours Automotive weld up this bash bar to fortify our cut up beam our of 4130 chromoly tubing to keep the stiffness of our front end. Our modified bumper is both stronger and lighter than stock, while giving plenty of room for the intercooler.
So, did adding the bracing to the front of Project STI make it as stiff as a VA? Well no, it is not that stiff. The VA feels so stiff, it's almost like being in a car with a roll cage. It would be impractical to emulate it with bolt on braces; the car would end up weighing a ton!
However, the Ultra Racing fender braces did make an easily feelable, big difference in how the car felt. Ride comfort was immediately improved with the added stiffness, making the shocks (instead of the chassis) take up road impacts. A chronic, irritating squeak that the car has always had somewhere inside the dash stopped.
Surprisingly, steering response improved quite a bit to the point where we found ourselves pointed at the apex of a turn too soon and would have to readjust our line. We were pretty pleased that the addition of these braces made these improvements in a car that was already pretty braced up with the extensive Cusco system.
As a note, the same sort of fender braces made an even bigger difference on our Evo even with the EVO's triangulated front tower brace. This means that the Subaru might be a little stiffer in this area than the EVO stock to stock.
Even though it was a lot of work and took two people half a day to do the install, it was not exceptionally difficult, just tedious and was well worth the effort when it came to improvements in the car's dynamics. Overall, our latest comprehensive additions of chassis braces have made a huge difference in the car, and we recommend this path for any GD that is packing serious suspension mods.
Read more about Project GD STI !
5 comments
Aww shit what happened to the old comments?! There was good data in the comments!!!
yeah sorry about that but as we transitioned to this new site it became clear that transferring the user accounts from the old site was a large and difficult undertaking. Since we didn’t bring the user accounts over, the comments couldn’t come with them either.
I know this is a slightly older wright up, but I wanted to point out that these braces were installed with the car on jackstands, this could have been the culprit for aligning the door as the chassis flexes a bit to where the jack stands are. Same reason why its typically common to weld in a roll cage when the car is sitting on leveled ground.
This is not the case in this car, maybe old cars. It’s just never easy to line up doors so you always have to be careful or you end up chipping the paint, etc.
It looks like Ultra Racing has discontinued these braces. In your research, were there any other braces like these that stood out as maybe equal to or at least 2nd place compared to these? I was literally about to order some for my 04 and saw the “Discontinued” sign 🙁