By the seaside...
As my efforts to resist the lure of the Strong-Strut tower and firewall brace set ended in abject and dismal failure, this little lot turned up yesterday along with bags of fittings - I was quite impressed as they only took a week to get here from Arizona including customs clearance
I got the full set of strut brace and two replacement firewall braces and first impressions were that they are very well made. No rough edges, everything is nicely machined and chamfered with a very nice textured powdercoat finish. I couldn't believe how light the pieces are, yet they really are very stiff - I couldn't get any appreciable flex when trying bend the pieces across my knee.
The firewall braces are a simple replacement excercise, unbolt originals replace with the Strong-Strut parts. The stainless steel acorn nuts are a nice touch and add an extra bit of bling. I'm not sure if it's strictly necessary but I added threadlocker to every nut/bolt assembly. I put everything together as finger-tight fit to start with and then removed the nuts added threadlocker and torqued them down
The Strong-strut requires either permanent removal or trimming of the camber pin - I removed, trimmed and replaced mine
Having seen a couple of photos of the SS installed in an Alpina and spoken to one Alpina owner with personal experience, I was a little concerned that clearance over the manifold might be a bit tight. I exchanged a few emails with Paul Ebeyer, the company owner, and he included a 'lift kit' with the shipment. This consists of a pair of 1/16" and a pair of 1/8" shims that fit between the rings and the strut bar, thus raising the bar a little. They also include some 'clay blobs' that you can sit at various points along the bar, then gently close the bonnet to get a decent visual indication of clearance between the bonnet and the strut brace
This was the clearance using the 1/8" shims - the flattened clay shows the amount of under-bonnet clearance
The shims ensured there was decent clearance over the manifold
Paul also included a couple of plain black tower caps - they add a nice finishing touch. 8)
Once fitted, I went out for a mini-hoon (just for testing purposes), I'm weary of placebo effects but the front of the car definitely felt more solid. There is one particularly poor quality urban road close to home that normally has the front of the car shaking all over the place and today it wasn't - not that it was like driving a Bentley along that stretch but it was nowhere near the normal jittery experience
All in all a nice bit of underbonnet bling that, on first impressions, does appear to have some positive effect on the car - I'm sure I'll be able to expand on that as time goes on and I drive it a bit harder.
I can recommend Paul Ebeyer of Strong Strut he's determined to get things right and takes a great deal of pride in the quality of his product and his customer service.
I got the full set of strut brace and two replacement firewall braces and first impressions were that they are very well made. No rough edges, everything is nicely machined and chamfered with a very nice textured powdercoat finish. I couldn't believe how light the pieces are, yet they really are very stiff - I couldn't get any appreciable flex when trying bend the pieces across my knee.
The firewall braces are a simple replacement excercise, unbolt originals replace with the Strong-Strut parts. The stainless steel acorn nuts are a nice touch and add an extra bit of bling. I'm not sure if it's strictly necessary but I added threadlocker to every nut/bolt assembly. I put everything together as finger-tight fit to start with and then removed the nuts added threadlocker and torqued them down
The Strong-strut requires either permanent removal or trimming of the camber pin - I removed, trimmed and replaced mine
Having seen a couple of photos of the SS installed in an Alpina and spoken to one Alpina owner with personal experience, I was a little concerned that clearance over the manifold might be a bit tight. I exchanged a few emails with Paul Ebeyer, the company owner, and he included a 'lift kit' with the shipment. This consists of a pair of 1/16" and a pair of 1/8" shims that fit between the rings and the strut bar, thus raising the bar a little. They also include some 'clay blobs' that you can sit at various points along the bar, then gently close the bonnet to get a decent visual indication of clearance between the bonnet and the strut brace
This was the clearance using the 1/8" shims - the flattened clay shows the amount of under-bonnet clearance
The shims ensured there was decent clearance over the manifold
Paul also included a couple of plain black tower caps - they add a nice finishing touch. 8)
Once fitted, I went out for a mini-hoon (just for testing purposes), I'm weary of placebo effects but the front of the car definitely felt more solid. There is one particularly poor quality urban road close to home that normally has the front of the car shaking all over the place and today it wasn't - not that it was like driving a Bentley along that stretch but it was nowhere near the normal jittery experience
All in all a nice bit of underbonnet bling that, on first impressions, does appear to have some positive effect on the car - I'm sure I'll be able to expand on that as time goes on and I drive it a bit harder.
I can recommend Paul Ebeyer of Strong Strut he's determined to get things right and takes a great deal of pride in the quality of his product and his customer service.
You'll be banished from the Alpina purists dept if you're not careful 
