A question probably debated to death in the old days but here are my observations:

Courtesy FSTB - when you pull on the bar, the car bounces...
Stillen FSTB - when you pull on the bar, the bar bends, car stands mostly still..

Engineering input?

 

Which pretty much means the STILLEN is a POS...

 

the bar should not flex at all with a person pulling on it.

The $15 bar you can get on ebay is an exact copy of the cattman which is sold for ~60

 

the welds on the ebay bar arent very clean, but for 15 bucks......who cares :-D

 

yes. they are all the same.

 

true, but i've had no problems with it, and it looks good (which is about all your going to get from a strut bar on a maxima)

 

All the bar is doing is resisting compression and stretching forces. It actually won't even bend in an up or down motion at all when stressed. Try taking those two bars and pressing the ends together and see if you can get it to bend. That would be a much more realistic test. The stillen bar with it's straight bar design is much less prone to compression and stretching forces than the other bars that are arched.

Just like trying to compress a curved piece of metal vs a straight one. The curved piece will bend a lot easier under compression force.

 

Just thinking about the loads at work when the car corners, I think our FSTBs do very little. I still have one though...looks damn nice under the hood.

 

I don't remember what a stillen bar looks like but I know a courtesy had adjustments on the end. You'd screw it onto the two outer pieces that bolted up to the strut towers. Now if the Stillen piece is the same way then you would have to make sure that they are both being applied the same pressure from the shock towers in order to get an accurate measurement of how much the bar is bending.
If they have the same load on them then obviously you do not want the bar to bend. The whole reason the bar is there is to stiffen the front part of the chassis during hard cornering by not allowing it to bend. If the bar is bending then you are accomplishing nothing.

UNLESS of course you bar is a stillen polished unit then you are accomplishing a lot of bling blingin.

Ant

 

good point.. i guess the only time the bar would see forces strong enough to compress it would be during an impact

 

 

---> happy with the kittyman strut bar

 

---> pimpin with the stealin strut bar

 

I had a custommaxima.com front strut bar on my 2000 max and then ordered a 1992-1995 honda civic strut bar from stillen and it was a direct swap.

 

I agree with confused with his original point. I have had a courtesy bar for 4 years that I used from my 3rd gen and now it is on my 4th gen. I thought to myself that stillen bar has to be better, it costs 3 times as much, so I bought one off ebay. First of all I have the large acorn nuts holding my upper strut mounts so I had to file down the tops of these 2 nuts that go where the stillen plates bolt to the crossover bar, and I wasn't happy. My courtesy bar fit perfect out of the box. When both bars were installed I would do as confused had and grab the bar with my hand and shake the car side to side. The stillen would flex and bend, yet the tubular style of the courtesy bar wouldn't and the car seemed much more rigid and moved as one unit. Needless to say I sold my stillen bar soon after. It is not as good as those fstb's that can be had for much less.

 

Ya me too. What up neel?

 

Does your Stillen Bar bend Neel?

 

i had a fstb like the one on ebay about 3yrs. ago but i ordered the OBX fstb just for looks. i was so happy when it came in because i didn't know that the bar was 1" thick or more. the bar looked great.

i have to say when i took the old bar out and installed the new bar i felt a difference. the best part is that i only paid $60 for it and it worked as good as it looks.

 

i really havent done the whole bending thing, but as far as driving the car, i can say that this thing does its job... i push the car through corners all the time...... from an engineering standpoint any kind of pivoting negates from the overall strength, the best bar would be one that has no pivots... JTD has a bar for m3's that has NO pivot points that is amazing but its also WAY more expensive...

Until someone does a skid pad test with different bars, there is no real way to see which is better.. ill just keep modding my car with the phrase " you get what you pay for " in mind...

 

Stillen here, and no bending problems. I also had no installation issues with it. Dropped right in.

 

You are only going to get so much performance from a 2 point bar system anyway. Anything is better than just letting that big engine bay flex by itself though.

 

To all with the Stillen bending "problem": Is your bar adjusted properly, or did you just stick it on? Mine came with instructions, that I followed, and it doesn't flex at all.

 

Otto Racing FSTB here = Wannabe Stillen bar

 

i have stillen FSTB. it is highly effective and awesome looking.

 

might go to japan in the fall to go hunting...

 

Can anyone comment on the CustomMaxima.com FSTB? Is it good enough, or is the Stillen FSTB truly worth the extra $$?

Also, CustomMaxima has the Progress Rear Sway Bar--how is that?

I'm seriously curious because the CustomMaxima.com route for FSTB/RSB is more like $220 total, vs. $430ish for the Stillen FSTB & RSB...
Add stage 1+2 subframe connectors and you can see why I'd like to save some money

 

I have to Courtesy bar and all I noticed was that my front end stopped flexing over bumps.

 

How about when you run over deer ?

 

BABY DEER !

 

All the way to japan to go hunting? What will you be hunting for, Godzilla?

 

Godzilla ? ... i theenk i need a bigger box... maybe pick up some Koi too

 

yum. fishies

bring lottsa cash

 

Koi------------------->http://www.vcnet.com/koi_net/

 

koi = big hurt on wallet

 

what do they cost?

 

friend of a friend has a pond full of them
claims that they are worth 3 to 10 thousand each
they are adults. she sells the babys for 500 to 1000 each

 

Daaaaaaaaaaaaaaamn