Give 'em hell Matt.

The bar looks great, can't wait to install it. Thanks again.

 

sorry to hear that your so busy, but i am sure i am not the only one who appreciates the inovation that your have displayed when it comes to maxima. once you get everything sorted out and caught up, if you do decided to do some lower tiebars . i would be 100% inclined to purchase one so just keep us updated. thanks for the updates

 

Hey.. I'm busy because business is good- so I'm not complaining! I just get a little ticked when the same five people email me twice a day asking when their parts are going to ship and when they'll get a tracking number, when I've told them I'm working on it and I will email their number when it ships- you know how it goes. If they were local, they'd be parked in front of the shop waiting for me to finish them!

I'm not trying to turn down sales, or tick anybody off, I just need to be able to get out there and work- and I can't do it when I've got 60 emails to answer every day!

 

.


sounds good bump

 

Matt and everyone, I've had the LTB installed for a week now (many thanks to broaner22 for doing most of the work) but I haven't had much chance to drive yet. I don't drive my car daily. Initial impressions are very good though. Front end feels rock solid.

I still need to bend the bar a little so I can fully tighten the last bolt (socket won't fit), and then I'll take some photos of it on the car to show ground clearance. I'm dropping the car 1.5" or so soon so it will be interesting to see if I have any problems driving around town. The bar looks like it hangs very low, but as Matt said, it's right between the wheels so it's not going to scrape easily.

 

glad to hear your install went pretty straight forward , can't wait to hear impressions on the bar as i am waiting to purchase one myself. pics would be great. good luck

 

Update....

The install was not striaght forward at all. All together it probably took 4 hours of fiddeling(Not including running to the store for the nuts and socket). Again, I can not give my impression because the difference between the SE suspension and mine is too great. But it looks good and is rock solid.

Matt, I have decided that I'm not going to get one unless you make the next batch with a larger metal surround on the front bolts. 4mm larger would be suficient enough to make the install a true 15 minute job. Until then you will not recieve my business. Sorry for being so harsh but its the way I feel. This does not reflect how I feel about the final product. Once my tranny swap is complete I plan on getting every chassis stiffening mod available including this one.

Again, I ask if anyone has a link for the company that sells that expanding hardening foam that can be sprayed into the fram rail for chassis stiffening? I really want to make my car ride like a "vault". I guess I stole Dave B's description but its such a good word to use. Also, has anyone done body/seam welding on a daily driven car? If so, does it make the ride too vaultish and harsh. I might consider doing this if improvement is that great. More precision is always good. Seeing as my car is 10 years old I would imagine that some of the spot welds in the chassis have broken, reducing rigidity even more. Anyone care to interject.

 

We finally were able to fit the socket in the front metal surround or whatever it's called by bending the bar. We had the front end of the car on jack stands and then used the jack with a 2x4 right down the center (so it contacted both the front and rear crossbars of the LTB) to lift and bend the bar. This was the only way we could get the problematic metal surround piece to budge. Only then were we abnle to fit the socket in and fully tighten the bolt. This did bend the rear crossbar of the LTB, but it looks OK and still is rock solid. Plus I have an additional half inch or so of ground clearance now.

Thanks for a great product Matt, but I definitely second broaner22. It would be nice if you included two replacement nuts with more thread because the stock ones won't work (can't remember if it was the front or rear two nuts).

In regards to your comment quoted above: so what if you've installed it on several 4th gens with no problems? The two of us on this thread who have installed it so far had the exact same fitment issue, one on a 95 and one on a 99, so I'd say you should use slightly larger piping for the surrounds in the future. Your customers don't expect a "15-minute install" to take 4 hours. Sorry if I seem like I'm whining, but we're not idjits—the bar just didn't fit as it should.

I will post photos of the bar installed on my car, showing the bent segment, by tomorrow.

 

Duplicate post.

 

Next time I have a 4th gen over here, I'll look at it and see if I can figure out why you guys are having problems with them. Again, I pulled off the spare bracket on the rear two bolts and the bar had no problems fitting with the OEM nuts. Maybe my jig has gotten bent or something, but I highly doubt that's happened- it's made of some pretty thick steel, and I test-fitted two bars off the jig with d_warner's car before I made the rest. No fittment problems with them.. But I'll check things over if I can get him to come by with his car sometime soon.

 

Here are some photos:

 

Matt... When ever you're ready I'll volunteer my 96GLE Auto for a fitting!
I recently replaced the control arm bushings and because of the autobox I had to install the front left bushing with the control arm off the car. No way to get a socket and torque wrench on that one. I imagine the LST install will require the same procedure.

Cheers!

 

hey matt..

what are the 2002 Stage II Lower Tie Bar going for now?

 

4mm seems quite abit excessive. I can see 1-2mm.
Personally I didn't have a problem, I used a Master Grip socket. Slipped right in, tight fit, but still, enough room to tighten the bolts and get the socket out.

I had mine on in about 25mins from pulling the car in and putting it on ramps to grinding out my gusset and bolting everything back up to test driving. That includes going inside to pester Matt about using the stock washers or not, lol.
Grinding took the most time cause I had to grind then test fit, grind, test fit.

The paint on my bar is still in good shape, no scratches, but I never did get around to painting the gusset I grinded though . I completely forgot about that, lol.

 

Masaccio, the pics don't work for me. ?? haven't for the last few days- I was hoping the server was just down, but for some reason they're not working.

HNDA ETR, I've had to raise the price to $175 each for them, due to the cost of steel doubling and the now standard powdercoating on them.

Volkl77, I'm going to put together another batch of them for various gens and I'll make one up for you as well, and I'd like you to come over and test fit this thing again to see what the problems are...

 

Time for another weekly update... You guys are going to like this one though!

I have ALL of the bars done, including the two stainless 5th gen bars. All of the ones that haven't been shipped yet are powdercoated black, and they look goooood.. There's only one guy that wanted red, but you're getting black anyway. they wanted another $75 to paint yours red since it was a special batch, etc.. (you can paint it red if you want it that bad! )

I'm going to be boxing them up all night tonight and they WILL be shipped tomorrow..

you should receive tracking info from UPS's "Quantum View Notify" system in your email that you sent me money via Paypal- if you didn't pay via paypal, then you won't be getting a confirmation email and you can hit me up about a tracking number. (Unfortunately, my email program crashed last week and I lost all of my email from Jan until about 6-10-04.. so I have no clue the email addresses of the money order payments.)

umm, I think that's it. I'm going to get back to work, but this ordeal is finally coming to a close!

 

u are the man .

 

hey matt glad to hear everything is completed. when will you start making bars for regular sales. i was wondering if your going to take into consideration the problems these guys were having before you build the next set. i am interested in one of these once they are available and a true easy bolt on

 

Yeah, 2 extra mm in diameter for those rings would be plenty, I think.

Matt, the pictures show up for me but if they still aren't try this direct link to my gallery: http://www.lvcivs.net/maxima/ltb

 

Okay 2mm would definitely do the job but there is no need to make it so small is there? If you increase the size 2mm I would be satisfied but would still imagine there could be problem. Just my input. Definitely still an insane product and testament to the amount ingenuity/different type of tuner Maxima people are...If that makes any sense.

 

they're still not working.. I've tried in IE and Mozilla. both give me server timeout errors.
could you email them to me, please? sales@mattblehm.com


As for the problems, there are two small brackets w/ cupped washers on the sides where the rear mounts go.. Did you remove those, or try to install the bar on top of them? If you remove them, the bar will go on without a problem and the factory nuts will work just fine. Yesterday, I spoke with the two guys locally that I tested the 4th gen bars on and they fit perfectly on both.
when the rears are off like that, it causes the angle at the front to be messed up as well, thus the reason you can't fit the socket in there. As long as everything is done right, you'll be able to fit it all together just fine.

It's also not very easy to just go 2mm bigger on that stuff.. it takes hours of searching through catalogs and finding pipe dimensions and wall thicknesses. the stuff I'm using is already a special order item, and for the 3rd gen bars, it's the ONLY pipe that'll fit one of the mounts. since I have to order it and I've built 60 bars so far without problems, I don't see any need to stop using it on all of them.

 

Tell me about it.

It's a tight fit, but a good fit. After installing it I was wondering how the hell you had to patience to make that, .

 

Hours of crawling under the car and sorting through the scrap piles at the steel yard. when I finally found something to fit, it took me forever to have the counter guy identify exactly what piece it was... fortunately it only costs me $10 a foot

 

OUCH!!

Do you know if it will fit on a 2002 with the Cattman Headers installed?

 

Whenever you are ready Matt. I'll PM you my cell #.

Cheers!

 

Maybe there are somethings that are unclear, i have been following this post for some time now, and from what you are saying that you have had no problems with the installation of the 4th gen bars but these guys have had problems, i am not saying that maybe they made a mistake during installation but i am sure it would help if some kind of detailed instructions with pictures can be had so that everyone would know exactly what goes where and whst needs to be removed. you could load it on your website and those interested could just print it off.... so paper and ink wouldn't be wasted on yoru part. i would like to purchse one of these bars very much and in the pass i have had problems installing things where no info was included. thanks for the considerations matt

 

I'm having Volkl77 come over tonight and I'm going to take step-by-step pics of the install process for you guys. I assumed it would be fairly self-explanatory, but I guess it's not as simple as I'm thinking it is...

 

Matt, I don't know if we took those off or not. At that point Broaner was under the car so maybe he remembers. I will try to check tomorrow to see if we removed the brackets with cupped washers or not. But I do not remember you mentioning anything about removing them in the initial install write up earlier in this thread (at least not very specifically).

 

Hey Matt, so the 2 stainless steel tie bar are done, so you mean mine will be shipped soon, your da man.

Keep up the good works.

AA

 

just got my ups notification...
cant wait to check this out
how did the install go on a 2k auto? was it tight? any special tricks? im curious about this...

 

I'll post some pics of the 4th gen auto I did today in a few minutes.. bolted right on.. took about 40 minutes because I did some stuff backwards, but it was still pretty quick. a 5 speed will be a 15 minute job.

the 2k auto will probably be nearly identical on the install of the 4th gen auto, but the rear control arm mounting is a bit different (easier than the 4th gen as well!)

 

pics here:
http://www.mattblehm.com/HSS_images/...r/4th_gen_LTB/

I'll do some install instructions tomorrow or something.

 

pics look great . if possible could you reference the part in the pic in the right up. like for exmaple if your describing a blot just place like 1 next to it then say what needs to be done thanks. when can i place my order?

 

Yeah, that's gonna be part of the instructions... too tired to mess with it tonight, but I'm working on some of it now. it's a PITA to continually hunt through 30 pics looking for the right shot/angle for each step.

you can order whenever you're ready to send me money... I just won't be able to ship it out right away.. the more orders I have between batches, the more I'll have in stock, so the faster I'll be able to ship future orders.

 

Man that powder coat looks good


Too bad it will just get dirty and loose its luster after a few weeks

Matt, just curious, for the 3rd gen bar, You only removed 4 bolts total right (the 2 front and 2 rear)? No unhooking the FSB or unbolting other crap like the 4th gen pics right?

 

Correct. for the auto 3-gens, you can just loosen both tranny mounts and jack the tranny up a couple inches and it's out of the way. probably much easier than messing with the control arm stuff. you can't do that with the VQ.

 

i have a 99 5speed all i would need to do i remove 4 bolts and its a direct bolt on right? or do i also have to remove all the other stuff i saw in the pics you posted

 

You'll have to pull the washers off, but otherwise it's a bolt-on. 15 minutes for the 5 speed guys.

 

...............

 

that's what i wanted to hear i am going to place oder next friday (aka payday). hopefully there will be somekine step by step insturctiong explaining whan needs to be removes and what goes where