Good gawd, someone make a SFC sticky post. There are 5 (five!!!) consecutive threads in this forum asking the same exact frikkin question about subframe connectors.

First off, only get weld in's. Bolt in's do nearly nothing

Hotchkis if you want to spend money

Spohns are nice IMO, the way they tuck up nice and tight.

Alstons are my favorite of all. The tie the inner subframes together for a stiffer body as opposed to tying together the front subframe to the LCA points on the rear.

Competition Engineering weld ins are nice too. Comparable to the Spohns, except are square tubing. They tuck up pretty tight and you can weld along the whole pinch weld.

UMI's are another good option, I believe these are similar to Kenny Browns in that they tie into the trans tunnel.

 

A sticky is a good approach. I was just gonna yell at people but this is much more contrutive.

THINK ABOUT IT PEOPLE. With 5 to 10 posts a day about subframe connectors you could probably find ANY answer you need by doing a search for the last week. Not that hard...

 

Maybe you should read some more also before posting bad info.

Hotchkis and Alstons are only decent for drag launch only style driving while Spohns are good for all around use. Why? Spohns stlye DO IN FACT TIE THE FRONT AND REAR SUBFRAMES TOGETHER and they are perimeter welded along the chassis to help prevent frame twist. Something the other brands can not claim and suffer still in corners.

Ask yourself this- Where does the rear wheels push into the chassis to propell it? Ans- into the LCA connection points.

Spohn's design is the best you will find all around for drag, roadracng, and ground, and exhaust clearance. UMI is merely a proven copycat of Spohn and is riding his coattails just trying to directly copy Spohn and undercut him with production cost- sometimes I questions someones use of materials when doing this, but I have no proof of any such accusation of quality compromise as of yet. I just perfer to go with the guy that first designed it and produced it- they're prices are almost identical, might as well go with the guy who has ethics.

 

If you look at the way the UMI's are made, Ryan is actually losing money by using the box tubing.Look at how many welds there are compared to Spohn's or Gobal West's, so the "labor" cost has to be killing him.

Then again what the hell do I know.

 

Hey Genius, I never said they didn't tie the front and rear subframes together. I said that the Alstons tie them together better. The actual rear 'subframe' is inboard of the LCA mount. In the end they all do the same thing, they tie the subframes together. Not too sure on how either of the designs favors a particular type of racing. All I said was how the different brands get to the end result and my opinions on fit and ground clearance issues.



Barris Customs, isn't that the company that makes all those goofy a$$ cars for movies?

 

And again, this is where you are wrong. Look again at a 3rd gen chassis and where the load is applied to under acceleration.

 

Here's a picture outlining the 3rdgen subframes in purple.

The perimeter style Sphon SFC's attach in blue and triangulate the chassis tieing the front and rears together while MAINTAINING CONNECTION WELDS ALONG THE PERIMETER SPAN thus helping to eliminate chassis twist. Alstons do not do this and have a large void in the regeion they span from the rear to the front. Alstons also rely on bent tubing that still flexes and has ground dlearance issues- they kind of loop down and then back up to re connect.

Disregard the other stuff in the picture- Its a picture I did awhile ago explaining a braces. (Yellow)

 

Round tube vs square tube.

Sq tube has a stronger vertical load capacity, but is very weak when twising load comes into play. pound for pound, the round tube is much stronger all around. If the square tube is thickened to compensate for twist strength, it is much heavier.

Also, round tube comes in much more variety of DOM seamless. Round tube takes more skill/time to fabricate to is not as cost effective to produce hence why you see many more square tube frame in mass production. Round frames of the same weight are far stronger than square tube frames.

Once the motor torque is applied to the chassis, it will exert twisting force, square tube losses stregth in that twisting force where round tube shines.

 

while the concept of this thread is good to be a sticky, the bickering isn't very constructive.
Pictures, and explanations help why one design is superior to others, but in the end, a list of who makes them, and what the price is, and an average rating 1/10 would be most helpful IMHO.

 

Yea, BarrisCustoms kinda missed the point and went on some tangent about how spohn is only choice for subframe connectors.

Here is the point...

If you have questions about SFCs, you want to know how they work OR how hard they are to install OR where to have them installed OR which ones people have and like. This should be the post for it. All five posts on SFCs just wanted to know which company to buy from.

The way I figure it, we can either take a vote and become a "Buy only spohn stuff website" or we can continue to just offer a breif comment on which SFCs each of us recomends.
Personally, is seems better to have one post where we do this instead of 5 a day. Make one sticky SFC post and delete any other "which SFC should I buy post."