Tegiwa X Brace


Boyle

Boyle

Well-Known Member
Joined
Jan 14, 2009
Messages
1,240
Car(s)
K20A EK9 & FK8
Are tegiwa X braces any good?
 
I will keep the mugen one and run both
 
Define 'good'.

All these monkey bars are pointless unless you are talking purely about aesthetics.
 
Do they make a differance to the car or is it just for looks.
 
Thats what I have always thought to but alot of people seem happy with what they have got.

Thats why I had to see if it was any good before I made a purchase
 
got the tegiwa x and upper and lower brace

im sure the upper and lower must add to rigidity but i dont think the x does anything apart from look fancy
 
Boyle said:
Do they make a differance to the car or is it just for looks.
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Braces are all about looks mostly, there is no measureable performance gain (rear subframe braces excepted).

Cage it or leave it alone IMO.
 
The fabled 'rigidity'. Buy it because it's shiny not because it will make your vehicle a race-car and you won't go far wrong.
 
At the end of the day the x brace stiffened my rear end dramatically, your connecting the c pillars to the suspension struts to 'reduce' not 'eliminate' lateral flex under load shift!

The lateral bars are useless when used with the x brace, you have already connected the c pillar to strut tops via the x brace which has a point of contact between all 4 ends.

I agree that tegiwa's products on the whole are pretty terrible TBH, but the matter of the fact is a strut brace is a strut brace at the end of the day, no matter the make they all do the same job.
 
i once found a video on strut braces, A japanese company fitted a strut brace at the front and cut it directly in the middle and cut a 1cm section of brace out, they then mounted a camera and a rule next to the missing section. they then watched to see how much the chassis flexed between the 2 strut twers at the front... i will try to find the video again as it was a lot more movement than you would expect...

people get to het up on how much gain something add's.
If i add a rear strut brace to my EK4 and it makes no difference in POWER, no difference in CORNER SPEED, or LAPTIMES... it doesn't mean it has had no effect on the car or me.
With the rear end now feeling tighter and more conneted to the car, This in turn allows me to have more confidence in the car and or more control..
It could even effect the way the car handles it may feel faster to turn in for example this may not effect any actual performance but if it affects the characteristics of the car to SUIT my driving more then IMO it is a good upgrade. even though it has no said performance gain...

Lots of things to do with the way a car goes well is not how fast or how much it does something, but the way it does something...
 
Kozy said:
Braces are all about looks mostly, there is no measureable performance gain (rear subframe braces excepted).

Cage it or leave it alone IMO.
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Sorry, I don't agree with that entirely!

You can measure flex and rigidity with a 'creep guage' we use them at work on Typhoon when it comes to structural health monitoring.

This could gauge/calibrating tool could be used in a car if I could get some mounts adapted! I could test the x-brace on and off the car and this would prove on paper in black and White any slight differentiation in lateral rigidity!

And I garuntee the results would show positive structural effects :nice:

You can read and read all you want on a certain subject but until you try or test or put into practice it's just an opinion :)
 
Jimbo said:
Sorry, I don't agree with that entirely!

You can measure flex and rigidity with a 'creep guage' we use them at work on Typhoon when it comes to structural health monitoring.

This could gauge/calibrating tool could be used in a car if I could get some mounts adapted! I could test the x-brace on and off the car and this would prove on paper in black and White any slight differentiation in lateral rigidity!

And I garuntee the results would show positive structural effects :nice:

You can read and read all you want on a certain subject but until you try or test or put into practice it's just an opinion :)
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Touché

K&C Case Study

The bolt-on chassis bracing mentioned in the first article was tested as well. The car has a front upper and rear lower bolt-on brace, and after the baseline test was complete they were disconnected and a few tests were run to see their effect. The braces had no effect on wheel rates in bounce and roll, and in the compliance tests the results were barely noticeable. The largest difference was in the lateral opposed test where cornering forces are applied in opposite directions on either side of the vehicle. In this test the rear brace showed a difference of a couple hundredths of a degree of camber per 1000 lb of cornering force, while the front indicated a very slight increase in stiffness with the brace removed. The bottom line is that these braces added weight and cost but provided no practical performance improvement.

Given the nature of the braces on this car, which bridge between two parts of the car without triangulating to a third point, it's not hard to imagine that their effectiveness would be minimal. But based on the number of personal accounts by people who have installed the bars and report huge increases in vehicle responsiveness and handling the only true way to determine the value of the bars is to do a back to back comparison on the K&C machine.
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That's on a shonky old CRX. I'd expect the results on a newer, stiffer EK chassis to be even less noticeable. I accept that at least the X brace is triangulated, but I would still expect there to be minimal measurable effect. Based on the above, I maintain my opinion that these are, in the main, aesthetic additions.

I would welcome you testing it and proving me wrong though! :D

This in no way implies that they are utterly pointless, it's only an opinion at the end of the day and I am an opinionated twat, if people find they do positively affect the handling of their car, then that's great. I'd just rather spend my hard earned on things that actually have a real, measurable effect on performance...
 
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Jimbo said:
i have one, its good :)
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When did you get one? cheeeeky! lol

Jimbo said:
At the end of the day the x brace stiffened my rear end dramatically, your connecting the c pillars to the suspension struts to 'reduce' not 'eliminate' lateral flex under load shift!

The lateral bars are useless when used with the x brace, you have already connected the c pillar to strut tops via the x brace which has a point of contact between all 4 ends.

I agree that tegiwa's products on the whole are pretty terrible TBH, but the matter of the fact is a strut brace is a strut brace at the end of the day, no matter the make they all do the same job.
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I have to agree with jumbo here,i got mine ages ago and straight away noticed that it stiffened the rear end,you can definately feel it. For example when exiting my drive way (which is sloped) you can hear the brace creak slightly when coming into contact with the flat ground,thats would tell me that it is accepting the strain therefor increasing rigidity.
 
Good observation Michael, you can't tell some people as there far superior :rolleyes:

Kozy, I will test it as soon as I can get mounts to enable the test equipment to fit from typhoon to EK.

An opinion is just an educated guess when you don't have the facilities and equipment to back it up, I think you should listen to people more often, you never know the person on the other end of the keyboards experiences and knowledge on certain subject areas ;)
 
pretty sure kozy is just moaning about the fact that the tegiwa copy has alot of pivot/flex points and not really a "true" brace. There is no doubt that it will work to an extent, just not to the same level as a weld in cage. :blabla:
 
You're right, I don't. Since it appears you do in this case, then please accept my apologies, I am always pleased to be proved wrong.

What do you plan to test, the strength of the brace itself, or the movement between the mounting points without the brace? Will this be on an EK9 or an EK4?

By Typhoon, do you mean the jet fighter?

elchunk said:
pretty sure kozy is just moaning about the fact that the tegiwa copy has alot of pivot/flex points and not really a "true" brace. There is no doubt that it will work to an extent, just not to the same level as a weld in cage. :blabla:
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You know what, I've never actually looked closely at one. I just don't get the fad of bolting every conceivable point of a Civic to some other point in the persuit of rigidity. For the money you'd spend on a bunch of braces, you could put it towards uprated springs/dampers/antiroll bars/tyres or any of the other parts that do have a real effect on the cars performance.
 
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Kozy said:
You're right, I don't. Since it appears you do in this case, then please accept my apologies, I am always pleased to be proved wrong.

What do you plan to test, the strength of the brace itself, or the movement between the mounting points without the brace? Will this be on an EK9 or an EK4?

By Typhoon, do you mean the jet fighter?
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yes eurofighter typhoon :)

what you appolagising for, you've done nothig wrong :lol: just need to listen to others points and views once in a while.

there's no pont hardness testing the brace as this will prove nothing apart from the metal grade and type! i plan to measure the lateral movment from 2 rigid given points on the chassis to a singular maybe 2 points on the c pillar and suspension struts. this will be done via the use of infrared lasers and recievers atatched to the said points of interest.

the only problem i forsee will be keeping all the variables in check, i.e. cornering speed and turn in rate, any ideas??

the only other thing i can suggest is load the car with extra weight and jack up each wheel individualy putting load on the shock and stress on the chassis, measuring the amount of flex at certain points, this would be the only way to get a fair test each time. i know this is not ideal either as it would not be able to simulate load shift.
 
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