Hello everyone and welcome to this week's video.
Today I'm going to be explaining strut bars and the purpose of strut bars.
Now, essentially strut bars are used to increase the rigidity of a car,
for when you're cornering or if you hit bump or something like that,
you're gonna increase the rigidity of your car and basically it's going to make it a bit more predictable,
give it a little bit better handling so that there's not flex in your chassis
when you hit a bump or something like that or you're going to a hard corner.
Now, these particular strut bars that I'm going to use in this video are courtesy of redline360.com
I'm gonna have a product link and a link to redline360.com in the description,
so if you'd like to check that out, feel free.
So let's take a look at first of all where these will be installed.
Okay, so here we have the engine bay. Basically, if you just follow the tires directly up,
you can get to your strut towers.
So there's the front right strut tower and here is the front left strut tower.
And what we're essentially going to do is connect those two.
Ok, so now that we understand where these strut bars are going to be installed,
connecting the two strut towers, let's take a look and kind of analyze the forces that are going on.
So I've got two different suspensions setups here, one is Mac Pherson Strut,
which is basically why strut bars are created.
Mac Pherson Struts are load bearing at the top whereas double wishbones aren't really where the—
the coilover connects.
So I've got a double wishbone here and a Mac Pherson Strut here and I'm going to talk
about some of the forces involved.
So first of all we're going to pretend that we're looking at the back of the car and it's going around a corner—
we'll say it's going it's going to be taking a hard right corner, and so, what's going to happen is
the car is going to want to go to the left, but friction is going to push the car and allow it
to maintain that corner and not slide.
So this is your friction force here coming in from the road and here's your tire.
So that friction force—here we've got our lower control arm and the friction force is going to want to rotate
this tire kind of down towards the ground about this point of your lower control arm.
So it's going to create a moment about this control arm and when it does that,
it's going to be pulling this tire kind of down like that and it's gonna be pulling on the upper strut,
where that strut connects with the body of the car. So this right here is the body of the car and then this is
where your strut connects, so it's going to be pulling—there's going to be a force pulling on that.
So that strut reaction force is what—basically, if you don't have a strut bar—you're just going to have the
body of the car, which is going to be the reaction force. If you do have the strut bar,
you're going to be using both sides—both towers of the car and that force is going to pass along here
and both of these towers are going to take that force, opposing the friction.
So, once that has been kind of cancelled out by the two towers
rather than one, you're going to have less flex going on in the body of the car.
Now, if the other setup is a double wishbone suspension—so here we gonna have the car going in
a different turn. So now it's going to be taking a left hand turn and so we're going to have a friction force coming in
because the car wants to slide out but friction is going to prevent it, and so it's gonna push this way.
That's going to cause a moment, created about this lower control arm, and in order to counter that moment,
there's going to have to be a force—a reaction force in the upper control arm which is countering it.
So, basically, here what we've got going on: this strut reaction force is going to cancel out
that moment there, whereas on the double wishbone suspension, this upper control arm force
is going to counteract that moment created at the lower control arm.
So that's going to basically take on the forces from the G-force—the lateral forces
are all can be absorbed within this suspension setup,
which is one of the advantages of a double wishbone suspension.
so that said, a strut bar will play a bigger role with a Mac Pherson Strut vehicle.
Now, for example with my car, this strut bars are for an Accura Integra and the base Integra
does not come with strut bars.
However, the GSR or the type-R Integra do come with the strut bar,
even though it's a double wishbone suspension.
So why might you want a strut bar even if you do have a double wishbone suspension?
Well, as the car leans in cornering, it's going to compress that spring and so you're gonna have—
as the weight transfers over and the body rolls, It's gonna compress this spring
and you're going to have a vertical force pressing on the body of the car.
So by connecting that you can kind of transfer this force across the strut bar
and allow both sides of the car to take on that force.
Also, if you hit a bump, you're going to have very large vertical force, and that's all going to go to that
one single strut tower, and so if you've connected your strut bars, some of that—the horizontal component
of that force will pass over and you can absorb the force with both sides of the strut tower.
So, as I was saying, that's why on a type-R it comes standard.
In quite a few cars out there it comes standard.
Also, in the rear you can apply the same principles, whether this is in the front of the car
or the rear of the car.
I believe the JDM Accurate Integra type-R did come standard with a strut bar in the back.
So we can take a bit more detailed look at these strut bars.
In the front, this is the front strut bar and this is the rear strut bar.
So basically one thing to keep in mind is a strut bar is only a strong as its weakest component,
So, for example, these are some high-strength bolts here, since there's going have a shear force.
And then you've got this thick metal here to pass that force along.
So thanks for watching. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to leave them below.
And don't forget to check out redline360.com