Strut Bar installation?

[Petrucci914]

I know there are a lot of posts on this but none seem to come right out and say it or I see money people doing it differently. Do I remove those stock black c-brackets? I see that some people left them on. What are the torque specifications? Someone said 25 ft/lb and someone else said 29. Thanks!

[Petrucci914]

I just attempted to put it on (megan strut bar) and noticed that it rubs against that metal bracket on the AC line. Did anyone have to remove this? Thanks!

[joholste]

i didn't have it rubbing on anything when i put it on and i removed the black c brackets as well.

[meistees]

I left the brackets and put washers on the bolts so everything sat flush

[binary]

Installation was a little more involved that just bolting it on to the existing strut studs. The factory retainer had indentations to allow it to conform to some of the irregularities in the strut tower. The brace's retainers were supposed to replace these - but didn't have the indentations. This made me decide to leave the OEM ones on and find a way to mount the brace above them.The studs were not long enough to allow for the strut clips to be bolted on top of the factory retaining clips. So I decided to replace the factory bolts with chome bolts that were about 1/2" shorter.This gave me a total of 3/8" of stud to work with now - using the same chrome bolts to secure down the tower brace's clips. I was able to mount it very tightly.-Source: http://www.binaryspiral.com/vi....html

[Lancer]

can you send us a pic to see whats goin on?Or you can come down and I'll make it work for ya. I got the Freedom Design stb and I took the original pieces off. It looks sorta ghetto if you leave them on (look in any tuner mag and see if any of the cars have the stock plates on.) But, I can understand keeping them on if the stb doesn't have the notch.

[Petrucci914]

Ya. I'm going to need to buy some thick washer to put in those notches so it sits a bit higher and then buy some different nuts to use. Either way I should come on down sometime and talk Vibe.

[Toasted7]

Torque specs? I just put mine on and made sure it was a tight fit... did I do something wrong? Do I need to do something else to make sure the strut bar is installed correctly?

[iinan]

I went with the TRD and the install went very easy..

[Mavrik]

Quote, originally posted by iinan »I went with the TRD and the install went very easy..Same here, TRD install went very easy. I removed those brackets as well and torqued the nuts down as tight as I could by hand as I don't have any torque spec tools yet. Mine also sits on top of the a/c line. I'm thinking I may see if I can move that down a little. Would hate to have that rub through.