DIY Installing Front/Rear Strut Braces

rigby

Well-Known Member
State Event Organiser
Quick guide on how to install both front and rear strut braces. Front brace should take all of 5 minutes, rear brace maybe 15mins depending on how you cut your carpet and how neat you want it.

What you need:

Stanley Knife/Box Cutter
14mm or 9/16 spanner/wrench. Socket sets won't be usefull unless your 14mm socket is elongated.
Strut braces
17mm wrench
An Allen Key fat enough to fit behind the adjustable bolt (will make sense later)

IMPORTANT: DO NOT JACK UP YOUR CAR WITH THE STRUT TOWERS UNBOLTED!!!!

Front Brace:

Step One:
Unbolt your strut towers. You need your 14mm or 9/16 spanner here. Undo all 4 nuts and keep them to the side.

Step Two:
Adjust your brace so that both ends sit on the strut towers nicely. Put the nuts back on loosely just to hold the brace down.

Step Three:
Tighten your brace on both ends. Mine needed a 17mm spanner and 14mm spanner for the two different adjustable bolts. This is where you need your allen key. Stick it behind the 14mm bolt to hold it in place while you tighten it with the 14mm spanner, otherwise it will just keep turning and never tighten.

Step Four:
Tighten the strut bolts very firmly, but not overly firm.

Step Five:
Admire your work.

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Rear Brace:

Step One:
Cut out the carpet from the struts. You can either pull out your carpet and do a really neat job of it, even cut out a small groove purely for the brace and leave the carpet attached as a small flap to cover the strut. Do what you want here, but be careful with that knife.
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Step Two:
Undo the nuts from the struts and keep them to the side.

Step Three:
Same as before, line up your brace onto the struts and loosely put all the nuts back on to hold it in place.
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Step Four:
Tighten the brace itself with your 17mm/14mm/allen key again just like the front brace and tighten the nuts back up.

Step Five:
Clean up your carpet if you feel like it, otherwise enjoy.
20130925_124334_zps2ea46bb9.jpg
 
Dunno why they are upside down, I've flipped them twice to fix it. Whatever.
 
Nice DIY, I'll have to put them in my suspension upgrade budget, now next year some time.

The only thing I'd do different is make a slit through the carpet for the rear ones.

Dumb question but I guess you can remove the bar without unbolting them from the towers? Just in case you needed to get to something.

So how much clearance is under the rear bar?
 
If you get an adjustable brace, yes you can undo it without undoing the strut bolts. I guess it sits roughly 10cm or so out from the rear seats. Takes up bugger all space.
 
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