Celica Forums General Discussion Exterior X-Brace

I saw this on a car and was wondering if this helps out at all? I have never seen this before until recently so i was just wondering if anyone else has it and likes it. Thank you.

I guess if its a solid mount it may stiffen it a little...but takes up ALL ur room

never seen it b4 in my life, y not jsut get the trd rear brace?

Well i barely use my trunk, i have a van for hauling things.

As for the TRD rear brace i would get that as well i was just curious on how this thing performs

it doesnt take up much space at all.. it should shift so you can throw stuff on top of it right?? or in the gaps of the brace?

it wouldn't really do much down at the bottom of the trunk I would think. It would have to closer to the hatch to serve any realy purpose.

The bottom of the trunk has plenty of support. It's the top that needs it since it has no crossmember.

that's my 2 cents

thanks darren... i probably wasnt going to get one but was just curious on how it works but you are right the top need the help

that's the stupidest thing i've seen in my life. for everyday drive, you really don't need unless it unless your car is on track or rally course on a daily basis...

I would say just get the TRD rear brace.

Don't really know, but you could always build a false floor on top of it, and you wouldn't really know it's there...

There is absolutely no point to doing that whatsoever.

All you are doing is reinforcing the interior of the car.

That't not even touching either of the rear struts

Good for the crash up derby!

What's wrong with you people? Do you even know the purpose of braces on our cars?!?

the Celica is a UNIBODY car, in other words, there is no actual frame, the entire car is made from bent and formed sheet metal, that means, anywhere there is a stretch of sheet metal without any pre-formed framerails, there is going to be flex, and a lot of it for that matter. even the framerails will flex more than a car on a conventional steel frame. this is nice if you want a car with a cushy ride, but if you want precise and predictible handling, good traction, or safety in a crash, you need to tighen up a unibody chassis beyond stock tolerances.

Even if a bar is not connected to the strut towers, it makes little difference, you could weld bars to the strut towers, connecting them together and making them as stiff as possible, but if the rest of the connected chassis still flexes, you may as well be installing a strut bar on a pogo stick, since the chassis will still be flexing, and the suspension will still bob and flex in the end. The goal is to make that all-sheetmetal chassis more rigid; To get that go-kart feel, you need to stiffen up the entire car, and there are lots of methods to do this.

the purpose of an x-brace is to stiffen up the chassis in the cargo area. this is the biggest area of chassis flex on the whole car; it's wide open, sure, that hump in the back (that the bin usually covers) helps stiffen things up, but since it's a hatchback, you end up with a large, open pocket of sheetmetal that twists and bends more than you realize. add to that the spare tire well, which is usually formed from Fiberglass, and you have even more chassis flex.

Yes, a TRD rear strut bar will help stiffen things up, it will limit vertical (left to right)flexing of the strut towers, but on a horizontal plane (front to back), they will still be flexing a lot, that's what the x-brace is there for, it stiffens up the rear chassis on a horizontal plane. this is why the better rear braces will have one or two more connection points that attacth to the floor of the trunk. the TRD does not have this, they connect to the crossmember rail in the cargo area, but not to the cargo pan.

If you don't want to deal with all the braces and bars, a sure fire way to stiffen the chassis is to do what the honda guys do: pull up all the carpeting, remove the spray-on sound deadening insulation, and stitch-weld all the seams in the sheetmetal, this will make the chassis a lot stiffer than stock.

the best way by far is to weld in an actual 4 or 6-point cage.

^ good post

"what those honda boys do" is also the reason they have all that excess weight.

If the cross brace is so good, why doesn't the hotchkis kit come with one?

You don't need it.

You don't need a Hotchkis suspension either, but some people want the improved handling.

Hotchkis makes a good kit, but it's far from complete, it doesn't address every issue, and while the average guy who's autocrossing or driving on the street may not want the added stiffening, it's up to the individual to decide what degree of rigidity they want for their car. This is why Hotchkis also sells individual components.

the original Hotchkis celica also has a Chromolly rollcage welded up in the interior and additional supports welded up connecting the firewall to the front strut towers in the engine bay, but does Hotchkis sell those too? of course not. Hotchkis is a chassis man, and he knows the weaknesses of a unibody.

BTW, Strut bars add weight, bigger rims add weight, big four-piston calipers add weight. just about any additional suspension component will add weight to a car... so what? So you stitch-weld the chassis, it adds about 10 LBS max... all the sound deadening material you need to scrape off to do the welding in the first place shaves from 25-50 LBS off the car, so in the end, you still weigh less using this method. Hell, additional stitch welds will be lighter than a new strut tower bar.