I recently bought a strut tower brace (front) from an Infiniti dealer and have a small problem I would like advice on. First of all the fit was not all that good as on the drivers side there was no way to get a socket on the nuts as the clearances were too tight. I had to carefully grind the bracket to create enough clearance to get a socket on and tighten it down. There is some adjustment in the height you can have the bar off the engine and since I was worried about the engine torqing and hitting the underside of the bar I went as high as I could... which isn't much... maybe a 1/4 inch. The problem now is that the top of the bar is getting scuffed with the hood lid padding To be honest I did not expect noticeable improvement in handling and only bought it for the bling.

So... you guys that have this installed... how tight to you have the bar to the engine?

 

1/4 inch clearance is probably way more room than you will ever need. The engine isn't going to torque that much. Bring it down a little. And you need to use an open end wrench on that one nut not a socket.

 

Several are running 2 credit cards clearance. There is a good pic somewhere on the forum.

 

i recently bought one from hp auto...and now i'm having second thoughts...

 

For the last couple weeks I've read your comments on this and it's not near as bad as you think it is. If you put a little effort into setting the bar you'll be ok.

 

yea, the G's my baby, and also the first car i paid for myself out of my own sweat and blood...that's why i'm so picky and **** with everything i put into this car...yea, i guess i'll be doing some minor adjusting for the engine cover (from your DIY), and fine tuning it until it's almost perfect...

 

That's what I like to hear!!! Take pictures too. I'm sure you'll do fine installing the thing by taking your time.

 

Thanks for the suggestions guys... I will re polish the bar and drop it down to a coupel of CCs and see how it goes. I assumed that the engine would move a fair bit... on say a hard shift. On my previous car the engine torqed quite a bit (Acura CL-S)... I actually installed a torque damper which helped a lot.

 

it's easy, get someone to just rev ur engine with ur hood open and see how much the engine moves....and honda's typically move quite a bit...that's why so many companies make engine mounts and torque dampeners for honda's....and that's why honda's get crazy amounts of wheel hop when u launch hard

 

Gtracing... I hear you on wheel hop issue. It was horrible on my CL and made hard launches from a stop almost impossible, especially with it being FWD. The damper really helped.

The G seems to be much more solid... the engine moves very little when revving in neutral... I just wonder about when it is under load / unload conditions... like spirited shifting

 

The GT Spec under braces for the front of the car will do wonders for stability. The 4 point and 2 point both. Your car is too new for the engine mounts to be worn and need replacement.

FWIW, I too have held off on the strut brace because of others' concerns with less than perfect fitment with rubbing the hood, not the engine cover. Unfortunately I'm not aware of any better alternative.

 

agree^^^^^

 

By lowering the engine cover a little, I was able to bottom out the strut bar on the drivers side thus gaining even more clearance away from the hood. Before lowering the engine cover, the bar was touching the cover when set to the lowest level. I was going to modify the drivers side strut bar bracket so I could set the bar even lower (even more away from the hood), but I didn't feel that was neccessary after I checked the clearances.

 

How do you lower the engine cover? How much clearance do you gain? Does the strut bar not touch the hood at all now? Any contact at all is unacceptible to me.

 

I haven't posted much about it yet but there's a little info in this thread:
https://www.myg37.com/forums/g37-cou...-9th-mods.html
All I get are red x's for pictures while I'm here at work and I forgot what pictures were used so let me know if that helps.