X-brace help the body shaking?

[Vintagevetter]

The first thing I notice, when I removed the targa panel on my coupe for the first time...was a "whole lotta shakin goin on". Since then I have read that the targa top provides a lot of strength in keeping the car from flexing too much. Because of this, I find that the car is much more pleasant to drive with the top on, because there is less flexing and shaking.

My question is...I have seen these X-braces offered by Mid-American that bolt to the bottom of the frame, that are suppose to stiffen up the chassis. Has anyone installed one of these....and do they work as advertised and worth the money?

I have never driven a C4 convertable, and I wonder if they shake more, or less or the same as a couple with the top off.??? comments? :confused

 

[Vettefan87]

The first thing I notice, when I removed the targa panel on my coupe for the first time...was a "whole lotta shakin goin on". Since then I have read that the targa top provides a lot of strength in keeping the car from flexing too much. Because of this, I find that the car is much more pleasant to drive with the top on, because there is less flexing and shaking.

My question is...I have seen these X-braces offered by Mid-American that bolt to the bottom of the frame, that are suppose to stiffen up the chassis. Has anyone installed one of these....and do they work as advertised and worth the money?

I have never driven a C4 convertable, and I wonder if they shake more, or less or the same as a couple with the top off.??? comments? :confused

My 87 has the X brace on the bottom since it is a convertible. What kind of shaking are you talking about? Is this at idle or driving down the road? If you are thinking about doing it the only bad part is that you lose ground clearence on a car that already has almost none.


Justin

 

[vetteboy86]

I have not noticed that much of a difference from the coupe to the vert. I drove an 87 coupe not to long ago, and they felt the same. Mine to has the X brace because it is a vert. It might be noticeable under really hard driving conditions, maybe. I guess that is why GM added some structural things to the vert to help with this.

Craig

 

[Strick]

There are two things you can do to really stiffen your Vette. One is installing a cross-bar (from R&D Racing) and two, installing a camber-brace from the same company. These 2 items will greatly improve your Jerry Lee Lewis problem. As far as the X-frame, R&D also has one, but will reduce your ground clearance. Dave Cooper, Owner of R&D Racing, is a great guy to do business with.


dcooper@r-dracing.com

 

[vader86]

They feel roughly the same, so youll need some type of stiffener if that is bothering you.

X-brace, Camber Brace, Targa Truss-bar

all available at RD Racing

 

[Hib Halverson]

The first thing I notice, when I removed the targa panel on my coupe for the first time...was a "whole lotta shakin goin on". Since then I have read that the targa top provides a lot of strength in keeping the car from flexing too much. Because of this, I find that the car is much more pleasant to drive with the top on, because there is less flexing and shaking.

My question is...I have seen these X-braces offered by Mid-American that bolt to the bottom of the frame, that are suppose to stiffen up the chassis. Has anyone installed one of these....and do they work as advertised and worth the money?

I have never driven a C4 convertable, and I wonder if they shake more, or less or the same as a couple with the top off.??? comments? :confused

The main problem here is cowl shake and steering column shake. production Convertible X-braces offer no practical improvement to coupes. They do, however, reduce cowl/column shake of the convertible structure such that it is about the same as a coupe with the roof out.

The only C4s without roll cages which handle well are coupes and they do so only with the roof in.

It is unfortunate that the C4 cpe. structure is a bit weak and the C4 convertible structure is very weak. In fact, the 'vert is so bad that it's resonant frequency is below wheel hop and that's one reason Z51 was never offered on the convertible.

 

[Hardlight]

I added the R-DRacing Cross Frame and it is a Major Improvement, really does a great job. Then I added a Camber Brace and S/T Frame (roll bar) and now the car is super rigid. Get in touch with Dave Cooper, he'll fix you up right away.

 

[laborisfree]

I added the camber brace and the targa truss to my 84. First I added the camber brace and the difference was immediatly noticable. Seems like a lot of time when we add a md we want it to make a difference so much that read more into it than is actually there. This was not the case with the cambebrace, the car cornered significantly better, was able to go into curves as much a 10mph more than without the brace. I then added the Targa truss, one of the great things in life is to go topless when driving hard but there was a real flex problem without the roof on. Adding the Truss was an immediate upgrade. The car was no doubt more solid, not a big improvement over driving with the top in except for the wind in the hair feeling.

Money well spent. The fact that you never see a used traga truss for sale says a lot about how effective they are.

 

[Strick]

One other thing I did to my factory X-frame was to box it. I welded a 3/8" piece of steel all along the bottom of the X-frame and this made the frame much more rigid. And it gave me excellent jack points.

 

[Gary04Z06]

The X-Fram Mid America sells is R&D's pieces. He sells to them. I have hte Cross Frame and the Camber Brace as well as the S/T Frame, thye all work fantastic!! I would not have bought a second and then a third item from him it they did not improve the handling.

 

[90topless]

Sounds like R-D Racing is the way to go. I will be contacting Dave real soon.

Thanks for all your info.