Better photos than the last ones

am i blind or , does everyone not see them .

wow!!! that brace is awesome!!!!!!!!!





LOL, nope no pics. just messin with ya man.

yeah I know....


I took the pics but cant get them loaded here b/c they are too big. I don't understand what I need to do. I tried them as JPG and BMP files. Anyone got any advice?

Get yourself an image processing program, such as Paint Shop Pro; crop them down to nothing but the useful part, like if you're taking a pic of a carburetor, don't show us the fenders and the ground on each side and the grille and part of the windshield; re-size them to 640 pixels wide at the most, or smaller if that will work; save them as JPGs; set the JPG compression as high as it will go without harming the picture quality.

While you're at it, adjust the image gamma to about 1.6 - 2.2, depending on the light you took them in; and when you do that, increase the saturation by about 30%.

I can usually get pics of stuff like that down to about 40-50k easily with that program, doing exactly as I described, with excellent clarity.

Yeah, email them to me at chris@djcobol.com and I'll put them on my server for you.

sort of got the stealth thing going on i believe, no one would post a pic of something and forget to post the pic would thay?

try this one (oh yeah...this is a b-pillar brace)

here is a wide shot: (the garnish molding in last pic is still being beautified).

interesting. did you notice much of a difference with it?
i guess there goes the back seat eh? not that we have much of a back seat in these cars.

Big difference in steering, cornering, maintaining lines, stability, decreased chassis flex, and decreased chassis noise.


You can do this in a hardtop by making brackets that attach to the upper seatbelt mounts.

Check out r-dracing.com for similar products on vettes.

Made that one myself.

Oh...notice that the backseats stay where they are. No need to remove them. Passenger can just slide under the bar. But....I guess they are kind of pointless anyway (2+2....yeah right).

cool idea i suppose, lawsuit waiting to happen if you actually let someone ride back there.

I'll just have em sign a waiver.

It's called a "decapitation bar."

I like to call it "the mangler".


Cayse...dude are you hanging from the ceiling in your avatar pic?

Haha... it was part of the chaos from April Fool's Day. I think TomP and a few others messed with their avatars and sigs, too.

I've always wondered why a roll-bar system has to be so obtrusive in the interior. Couldn't they be welded to the actual body so they give more room?

I have somewhat started on something like that for my hardtop. I installed lap belts rather then shoulder belts. Now I just need flat metal for the ends.

Glad to know my idea will actually work. Now I just gotta find some metal and a welder........

You copied my idea [kida] lol. https://www.thirdgen.org/techbb2/sho...hreadid=220639

do the bars that go up over the pillar like the ones they sell for mustangs offer any support? or are they just for style? I like the look of the overhead bars

I see you had to heavily modify the plastic trim piece where the shoulder belt pokes through to fit the bar. Overheating issues? (I notice the bottle of Water Wetter in the back seat).

Lon

Ha..and here I thought that bottle was tabasco sauce.

Well...yes..there are other similar ideas. Guess I'm just standing on the shoulders of giants.

The mustang bars I'm not familiar with. Lightbars? If so, they are not "supposed" to add structural integrity. I don't know how they are constructed or how they mount. The one I made sure as heck adds support.

Waterwetter....ahhhh...a good friend in the hot texas summer. Yep, its time to drain most of the antifreeze (de-winterize) and refill with water, water-wetter, and a bit of coolant. Havent gotten around to that yet. Gotta keep up with that maintanence. Time to do tranny fluid also.

Yeah...modifying the plastic trim was not too bad. I just used a sawzall blade and some sandpaper. It will look better when I finish them. The entire job was really not labor intensive at all. Just took some time to get it all worked out in my head as to how everything would fit back together.


I will eventually add an overhead bar as well as downtubes that extend behind the rear seats to connect to the shock towers. Its gonna look good.

Here is the future plan for my crossbrace (isn't that purty??)

All I can say is

Do you realize that Vettes have independant rear suspensions? And that the spreader bar you posted in the vette helps support the rear camber points directly above the Vettes rear suspension?(just like a STB on the front independant suspension of your car) You have no rear independant suspension, and if you did, you are missing the brace boxing point by about 2 feet forward. All you are doing is bracing the pillars so the body doesn't flex when you close your door. There is no triagulation so you are still flexing the body under cornering just as if it weren't there (AND you are adding dead weight). Sorry, but the gains are in your head.

I applaud the attempt, but am sorry that you did not understand suspension geometry before you started. The best thing I would sugest is to trangulate down front the center point of that bar (right between the two rear seats) and each way with one bar each side tie drectly into the floor board near the front lca mount areas. Only problem is you will lose your rear seat access entirely. But what you will be doing is utilizing your body as a caged support to "reduce" frame twist in the rear, but still not eliminating front to rear total frame twist. This is why cages are welded into cars- to eliminate frame twist thus keeping all 4 tire contact patches on the ground under hard cornering. For this to hlp frame twist, you will have to build a front unit simular THEN tie them together also with triangular braces- Now you can start to see why you just need to build an entire cage rather than just braceng the body- it doesn't have the room to work.

You don't have rear ind. suspension, you have a solid rear axle which means the only thing needed to brace is the side to side axle support- you only need to focus on the rear panhard rod and mount points to show lateral inprovements in cornering

what bar are we even looking at in the vette? the cross brace for the main hoop of his roll bar?

The gains are all in my head? Come on, dude. Thats . Check out my sig. I have done alot of suspension/chassis mods to this baby over the years and I feel that I am pretty qualified as to whether or not a mod has or has not helped in the handling department.

I am aware that vettes have an IRS in contrast to the solid f-body's. But I hadn't considered why a brace like that might be more important with IRS. Thanks for highlighting that.

GM engineers (while we complain lots here about shortfalls in f-body design) are pretty good at what they do, I think. So, I give them alot of respect. In that regard, GM delayed production of the 4th gen convertible a full year because they knew the limitations of the f-body vert and were using computer models to highlight the biggest areas of weakness in the convertible chassis. Can you guess the 3 biggest areas of weakness and how they adjusted for them? Well one of things they did was to add more beef behind the rear seats and between the shock upper mounting points. Imagine that.

True, my brace is not located as far rearward. I was trying to adjust for the fact that I have no roof more than anything. But there is alot of heavy stock chassis work between the shock mounts and the b-pillars.

Yes, it could be triangulated to achieve better results. But I really had no clue when I first installed it whether it would be worth it or not. I wanted the simplest design possible and not have to modify the interior very much at all until I was sure that it would work well.

It has and I plan to further modify it and build on it in the future. Like I said before, I plan on an overhead bar and down tubes to the rear to get closer to those shock towers.

You can give me 10 more reasons why it SHOULD NOT work. All I can say is: It does.

Thats not a full roll bar in the vette. Its an S/T frame. Its kind of like the top half of a roll bar. Check out more like it at
http://www.r-dracing.com.

Lol. I'm not knocking your idea by any means, it probably does stiffen things up, but if I rode in the backseat of your car, it'd remind me of those amusement park rides where they put that gay little restraint bar in front of you. Kudos for the effort and the engineering though!

Thanks Pat.....I welcome any and all engineering/design opinions. I just get frazzled when someone tells me that any improvements I note are just illusion.

Yeah...I think the whole 2+2 GM idea was just for fleet purposes. I think 1 person has ridden in the back of my car 1 time. I keep telling myself to take the seats out.......Why can't I?

I'm kind of stuck on them, I guess. I have a hard time bringing myself to do it though I know they are pointless.