Aldo, I never had a stiffener in my S3 spider nor do I know anyone that has it installed.
Can you put into words the benefits of having one. I believe that would answer Hari's original question.
Man, Hari: if you only knew how funny that phrase is in English
Anyway, if you do a search on "chassis stiffener" you'll find a lot of info. I have one on my '91 Spider and it really helps. There is much less cowl shake with the stiffener. Also, when you jack the car up, you can clearly see much less body flex with the stiffener in place.
It's not cheap to buy or install, but I found it money well spent.
Tony,
I guess I don’t have any way of quantifying the improvement but before installing the stiffener the spider would sort of shudder for a split second after hitting a pothole or bump in the road, afterward there's a much more solid feel.
I’ve also noticed in tight turns on lumpy pavement there’s less of that front end hop which walks the front end outwards.
Nothing I can measure or prove, just feels much nicer.
If I didn’t feel the effort was worth the expense and the work, I would say so.
(Added)My install was on a very low milage spider (13K mi) which I think was much tighter to begin with than a similiar higher milage example. I would quess a tired chassis would benifit even more.
ha ridiculous translation or not .... I am not looking for the laugh .. I've been looking experience of people who have mounted this plug .. because the spider enough curves to prominence and at a faster passage through the bend ... amendment is not any problem to make, important to me Only that I know of that profile is and where exactly firmer ...
thanks to good suggestions ..
Because there is no roof on a Spider you have, in the middle of the chassis where the doors are, only two very minimal box channels that tie the front and rear ends together. So there is flex in that area. If the channel flexes either up or down the distance between the front and rear wheel must shorten - just like a string tied to the ends of two poles, pull up or down on the string and the two poles lean in towards each other.
The Erminas chassis stiffener simply bolts two steel square channel tubes on each side between the front and rear suspension attach points. As the chassis tries to flex it puts a compression on the tubing which greatly reduces the amount of flex by holding the distance between front and rear relatively constant (the tube itself will flex some) So, just like the two poles and string, if you put another pole across the top then the two poles cannot lean towards each other when the string is deflected and so you cannot deflect the string as much (unless you stretch it)
The crossbars in the chassis stiffener don't do much of anything and I've heard that you could actually leave them out and get pretty much the same results.
Does it work? Yes, it does work fairly well but it is not going to turn a Spider into a GTV. It's nearly impossible to duplicate the rigidity of a full hardtop that is tied into all four corners like that.
Every time this chassis stiffener subject comes up people seem to divide into two groups.
The first group contains the people who have actually installed it. These people all seem to say it works well.
The second group contains armchair engineers who have never actually built anything. These people throw out theoretical reasons why it just can't work.
I have not used it, but I suspect the first group is correct.
This is offset by the size of our Erection of Strengthening, so it cancels out.
Seriously, the stiffener makes a big difference. First time I jacked up a corner of the car after getting the stiffener, the other wheels came of the ground *way* faster than before. Really surprised me. Even if I didn't trust the seat-of-the-pants difference, the reduction in visible body flex from this test is hard to argue with.
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