Smokin' X-press

As some of you may have read in the General Forum and Group Deal Forum that there is a Lower Control Arm Brace for the A32 Chassis manufactured by GTFabrications. Well I tried to put it on my 2K1 (A33 Chassis). It wasn’t a simple bolt on as the rear bolts were off by ~1/2 inch. The distance that was off was b/w the front and the back bolts…so vertically and not horizontally. If you see the picture of the brace u’ll understand. The distance from the front bolt to the back bolt is the vertical distance. Horizontal would be the distance from the left front bolt to the right front bolt. That (horizontal distance) is fine for both the front and the back. Anyway, the shop that installed it (nissan dealer in my case) was actually able to modify it by bending the rod on each of the back bolts sockets to align it with the hole on the control arm. The install took one hour. So it’s not a DIY unless you have the necessary tools to bend it.

Now for the handling. I haven’t been able to test the car at the track as in the case of the Sub Frames Connectors, but just drove the car to and from work. My initial thoughts are that the steering feels a little heavier and stiffer and so does the front end. As for the steering response, it doesn’t really appeared to have improved, but I’m pretty sure this bar will make a huge difference at the track during high speed turns (gotta wait till next year to test that out though). I also spoke to Gtfabrications about my initial thoughts and he wanted me try it out taking fast turns and that’s where I’ll feel the suspension doing a lot more work and the car would feel more responsive. One thing that I did notice after installing the bar is the improvement (lack of) in wheel hop. If anyone has tried to floor the max on wet roads…u know what u’d expect…nasty wheel hop!!! I was really surprised as I did just that tonight coming home from work and absolutely no wheel hop and I’m talking doing so on wet and slick roads. I couldn’t believe it as the tires just spun and rpm climbed as the tires tried to get traction, but absolutely NO wheel hop!!! I’m not sure, but can this be the cure for our nasty wheel hops??? I gotta test it some more.

Overall, the car feels a lot more solid and the chassis feels really tight. I like how the car handles and rides now. The only thing I’m disappointed about is that I thought, my steering response would be better and crisp, but it’s not. I’m not sure why, but it could be the suspension (springs/struts) and tires (Nittos 555) I have. My suspension mods so far include:1. FSTB, 2. RSB, 3.Warpspeed SFCs, 4 Eibach and Tockico Blues and 5. The lower control arm brace.

Anyway, just thought I’d pass along this information for some modoholics to spend another $170. Also I’d be very interested in hearing what the 4th Gen folks have to say about their experience with this brace. Please let me know and hope this helps.

Link to Gtfabrications: www.gtfabrications.com