Introduction

I've been shopping around for strut braces ever since I installed my Neuspeed X-brace. I was leaning towards either a set of Spoon or Mugen bars, Mugen being slightly preferred. I like the Mugen bars since they looked indestructible, they are both 1-piece design, instead of the common approach of using separate pieces for the mounting brackets, and the rear bar should provide better structural rigidity since it mounts at a higher point (a foot above the rear struts) then the Spoon rear bar. The only problem with the Mugen strut bars is their price, about $260 each.

Well, due to Mugen's expensive, and somewhat excessive parts price it is only a matter of time before some companies start producing replicas. Well, that time has come and was one of the first vendors to carry both a replica front strut brace as well as a rear strut brace. They sell the set for a $130 + shipping, which is almost $400 cheaper then the retail price for a set of real Mugen strut braces, so I ordered a pair.

The replicas arrived in a couple days, and looked great but did not have a Mugen emblem on them. So I found some pictures of a set of real Mugen bars, ordered some matching Mugen stickers from and applied them to the replica bars. The results look great and cannot easily be distinguished from the real thing.

Front Strut Brace Installation
Installing the front strut brace was very easy. I unbolted the three nuts for the front struts on each side of the car. I then placed the strut brace in place to see how much adjusting I needed to make. I had to bend the bracket that connects to the passenger side of the stock strut tower brace, bend down the power steering line a bit, as well as the AC line. This took about 5 minutes of adjusting, checking clearences, and adjusting again. Once that was done I bolted the three nuts for the each front strut to 33 ft-lbs. That's it, nice and easy.

Rear Strut Brace Installation
Installing the rear strut brace was fairly easy as well. First thing is to cut the rear trunk panels to expose the bolts under the panel. While my replica strut braces didn't come with a cut out template like the authentic Mugen bars, it was fairly easy to guess based on a couple of pictures I've seen. I taped off the section I wanted to cut and went to work with the dremel. I first cut off a square-like section for the top bolt since that was easy to guess the location of. I then extended the cut to expose the lower bolt. This was easy since you can feel the lower bolt once you have made the cut out for the top bolt. I then cleaned up the cuts with a sanding dremel attachment and repeated the procedure for the other side. NOTE: Be careful when cutting the driver's side panel, there are a couple electrical wires near the lower bolt and you will cut them if you're not paying attention. Remove the stock bolts, mount the bar, install the new longer bolts that come with the bar, and your done. Click to see a rough diagram (with measurements) of the left panel cutout I made for the rear strut bar.

Although the shop manual doesn't provide any torque specs for these bolts, they were on pretty tight from the factory. I found some documentation on the Neuspeed rear strut brace, which uses different bolt placements, but in a similar location. They recommended 25 ft-lbs. I've read many people going with 33 ft-lbs, since that is the recommended torque spec for the front bolts. So somewhere between 25 and 33 ft-lbs should work fine.

Pics - Click a pic to open a larger photo
Review
Total Price: $150 for both (including shipping)
Total Time: 2 hours
Level of Difficulty (1-10): Front - 2
Rear - 3
Purchase Location:
Comments: The strut braces came very well polished to a fine mirror shine. Even so, I'm on a crazy polishing kick right now, so I gave it a once over with the polisher. The welds look great!

Update:  I'm installing the front and rear bars separately so that I could judge their performance improvements separately. My initial impression of the front brace, is that it tightens up the front end a bit, improving turn in. Not at much as the X-brace did, but with each suspension mod you tend to get slightly deminished returns as you gradually get to the best the suspension can get. The car seems more stable at high speed turns, but the difference is less noticable at lower g's.

Update 2:  I've finally installed the rear bar now. I used a dremel which made installation a breeze. The rear bar seemed to reduce body flex and made the rear end feel more stiff, in a similar way that the rear sway bar did. Overall it made the car feel more balanced, and reduced the tendency to understeer. After installing the front bar, I felt the car had too much understeer, but the rear bar corrected that. So if you are only going to get one of these bars I would recommend the rear bar over the front, but for the rock bottom price these go for, you might as well get both.