Fellow Knuckle-Busters-
A friend asked me the other day if I've just gotten a cat...
Ok, ok my arms did have a "few" scabs and scraps, but, it all has to do with
stress. After spending 5 minutes gettin my arm thru, around, under and past
all the minute Ohsh*t clips. (You know what Ohsh*t clips are...they're the
little unseen SHARP things that live just out of sight on the back side of any
panel on your car), I finally got a wrench on the nut, and if I pushed my arm
hard enough against one (or more) of the aforementioned Ohsh*t clips, I could
just turn the nut a half-o-turn, turn the wrench over, push against the Ohsh*t
clips again, and turn the nut another half-o-turn. Of course this amounted to
droplets of my internal fluids being spattered liberally throughout the engine
bay, but hey, when you finally got your arm there, what's a little blood !
I have a car (ok, I have several and this one's not a TR) into which I just
installed a stress bar. We all try to build race cars with the stiffest
chassis, but for most of us, we do not tweak our street cars like we do our
racers. My street car has the usual "boy racer" stuff, stiff springs,
adjustable shocks and fat tires. The car would "creak" and "groan" goin into
my drive, but I thought it handled fairly well. After I put the stress bar in
the car (it mounts to the shock mounts, the firewall and the engine itself), I
found that the car felt much "tighter", with NO deflection of the front body,
a more direct acting clutch, and a change of handleing that went from a slight
terminal oversteer, to a "waaay faster, terminal understeer (something I
prefer, especially on a street car). The only downside I can see so far, is
that you have to pay more attention to the steering wheel as small inputs seem
to make quicker, and larger respnses than they used to.
What I'm tryin to get at here is... it seems that you just can not get your
chassis too stiff, even on your street car...The difference was most
surprising !
I'm a believer...but still not a Monkeys Fan...
Nick in Nor Cal
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