While strut braces would be of very little interest, directly, to all of you falcon guys, I received a few PMs and certainly a few people with questions on ducted brake backing plates when I posted some pics previously, so I thought this may be something that you'd think would be worth looking at at.

Volvo 360 strut tower to tower brace.

For anyone who doesnt know what a Volvo 360 is, its a hatchback Volvo produced in the mid 80s for the most part. Early ones date back to the '70s overseas and featured Renault engines, later ones are mechanically similar to a Volvo 240 (stereotypical volvo that everyone thinks of when someone says 'volvo') with fantastic weight distribution.

later ones were 1.9 or 2.0 litre engines, while some people swap in the engine from a 240 (2.3 litre) which is externally identical, and since early engine numbers dont mention capacity, you can get away with this without anything more than telling Vicroads that you've 'had a reconditioned engine fitted'

Anyway, we've been working on a strut tower to tower brace for the 360 for a little while and finally finished our first run of them a couple of weeks ago and sent them off for powdercoating. We got them back last week.

Here are some pics.







Fitment is tight, but the result is that we dont have to use a bar with a bend or kink which, as you can imagine, isnt ideal when the purpose of such a brace is an increase in chassis rigidity and to stop independent movement of the strut towers when under load.

As I said earlier, not of much relevance to many of you, but possibly interesting regardless. - I read through a lot on this forum and while much of whats on here is of no relevance to what Im doing, I enjoy the read and find what other people are into interesting anyway.

Regards,
Ash

Good work!

Strut brace is required on a vehicle like that, as the struts aren't supported well. I learned this in my BMW, which has a similar engine bay design, and found cracking around the base of the strut tower!

In the falcon, there is a gusset panel for added rigidity.

are there any strut tower braces for say an EL or EF falcon?

There's little to no gain in doing strut tower bracing in an E-Series.
Whiteline do upper control arm bracing for the EF-EL.

nice work there mate

noticed a improvement in the handling yet?

This really would be a pointless endeavour. Strut braces are really of most benefit on cars using a macpherson strut rather than the upper and lower arm arrangement that you guys have on your falcons, fairmonts, etc

One could possibly argue that there may be benefit in increasing chassis rigidity, but difference would be neglible, we could always simulate in and work out where in flexes and how much, but I'd put money on there being no real-world, noticable gain.

On the 360 as shown in the pics, the difference in handling and sure-footedness was noticable within the first five minutes of driving.

Thanks for the comments guys, I'll post more new Volvo-stuff as we develop it.

If any of you have any ideas on some ford-specific stuff, we'd gladly entertain it, one-offs and custom stuff are fun to work on, even if a little time consuming.

Our product range can be seen on our website

http://members.optusnet.com.au/ashdavies/dvs

Cheers,
Ash

Spose tho any strentgh improvement is going to be benneficial but only if its really necassary.....and really most mods guys do on here thered be no need....but sure some crazy twisty big blocks this would certainly help even if only marginly

the weight of the car is still supported in the same place in the falcon as it is with a mac'strut setup.

and it's well known the falcon body is hardly what you could call rigid.