Quote:
Originally Posted by TLSTWIN
Yep even long term flexing/fatigue of the strut towers
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Now that it's been officially asked - that's not really what I was alluding to. It's more than reasonable to assume that the towers will not experience any fatigue failures pretty much regardless of how hard we hit them with bump and cornering loads short of actually crashing. Or taking it off-roading (kind of the same thing, actually).
What I was getting at was a matter of driver perception and confidence, where changing some of the structural vibration frequencies and moving their peak displacement points off to where they're less noticeable might be interpreted as the chassis being stiffer - a feeling that the car became "more solid" or perhaps "better composed". And things that improve driver confidence make it easier for him to extract more of the car's inherent performance, and do so more consistently.
That's where I think the main benefit lies in STBs added or applied to closed-roof cars being designed today, particularly those having much claim to "sportiness". This wasn't always the case; chassis torsional stiffnesses have commonly made 50% increases or better since about 2000, which in turn could have been double what they were 20 - 30 years before that. Most convertibles seem to be only half as stiff torsionally as their coupe counterparts, sometimes even less (I do have a list of chassis torsional stiffnesses).
I'm sure that there are
slight actual benefits in response and cornering g's to be had by installing a 2-point tower to tower brace. Just like there would be by changing front camber from factory preferred to a tenth of a degree more negative. Important at the F1 or NASCAR Cup level, maybe at the very pointy end of autocross and time trialing. Down inside the noise-level of everything else that isn't 100% optimal for the rest of us.
Peoples' perception is a funny thing. Elsewhere - and currently - I know of a person who just installed an STB up front and a shock tower brace out back "just to match what was done to the front", and who was utterly convinced that just those mods actually reduced the amount of cornering roll. Same springs, same bars, same dampers, tires, and probably even tire pressures. Forum, username and car withheld to protect the guilty.
Norm