im thinking of fabbing my own brace because no one makes one for tunnel rammed intakes. what would be the best material and size to use? any info will help. thanks,

project-rs

 

Aluminum, mild steel or chrome-moly steel. Depends on your equipment and skill level. I could do mild steel with my friend's mig welder but no way on Al or Chrome-moly. I'm thinking of using 1.25 inch square mild steel tube because it'll be the easiest to cut/weld etc. Not sure of the wall thickness to use. The bought stuff is usually 1.25 inch round chrome-moly with .065 or .095 thickness I think. But that much harder to work with without a bunch of special equipment.

 

If you have a tig welder, tubing bender and bandsaw , I would use 1.25" chromoly tubing and 0.190" chromoly plate.

 

i have a design in mind and its a pretty decent size

 

Been a while but I used a UMI unit that I modified attached with 3/4 inch tube with a .125 thickness I believe. Definitely want to attach it to the firewall you will notice an improvement and I also fashioned a master cylinder brace which gets rid of all the firewall flex when braking.

 

good idea twigger on the brake brace. Im gonna use that when i build mine.

 

once i get a chance to work on the camaro, i will measure up and draw out a quick design. it is going to be a tunnel ram specific strut tower brace. it will also be attached to the firewall.

 

Im lookiing forward to seeing this as I was thinking of doing the same for my LS swap as I know how I want it to look but no one really makes a good one I really like. You can tell they where never ment for a LS motor as they are too high or just look out of place

 

heres a quick question. when i make bends, should a do gradual bends or sharp bends? i havent gone to my car yet, so im just going to draw something up. it will not be an exact sketch

 

gradual bends are better, and straight pieces are better yet.

 

there will be a few straight pieces. on a few sections there will be some bends to go around the tunnel ram.

 

Bends wont compromise the strength of the tubing as long as the tubing isnt kinked. A small gusset in corners will give it alot of support. Remeber that triangles are the strongest shape.

 

i will be using gussets where needed. so far the main piece will cost around 60 just for the 1 1/2" chromoly tubing. im est. that this brace is going to run in the 2-300 range

 

heres a quick sketch. it is not to scale.

 

Wicked man I cant wait to see the finished product

 

thanks. the square tubing will also serve as the bracket for the throttle/ kickdown cables.

 

i went to the camaro today and took measurements. i will post a new almost to scale size drawing soon.

 

Are you going to gusset the areas between the straight bars from the strut mount to the U shaped bar around the tunnel ram?

 

heres the new and up to date brace. when i get the manual brakes installed i will know the exact location of the rear bars that will connect to the firewall. this is a 1:8 scale drawing.

 

Gonna look way cool. Are you still gonna tie it into the firewall?

 

yes i am. once i order the manual brake conversion i will have room to make the other 2 bars. also the wirewall will be ripped out and a piece of aluminum will take its place.

 

Looks sweet, can't wait to see some pics of it. I am wanting to make one myself, but have no idea on how to go about doing it.

 

Thanks for posting this. I purchased a UMI strut brace and was not 100% happy will it and was thinking the along the same lines to modify it.

 

I built one for my tpi awhile back out of 3/8 " aluminum plate that was very strong. Had to remove it to clear the stealth ram but planning to use alumimun again on my redesign.

 

How did you do the master cylinder brace? It didn't even occur to me that this would prove to be a problem.