I found a shop that is willing to put my car up on a lift and "see what [they] can do."

Any hints about other areas of the chassis that should be reinforced, e.g. suspension mounting points and such?

 

I would have them just tackle the SFC's for now.
See if they do a good job at those before having them try something else.

Mike

 

Anything else? Leaving in 20 minutes!

 

You probably saw this but I think I'll post it anyways, just in case you, somehow, missed this:

http://forums.maxima.org/showthread.php?t=480114 (especially post # 19)

 

Yup, saw that. Good source of information. Hopefully this project will get to the point that I will be able to make use of it...

I want to make sure I know about other potential weak points in the structure, though. Any more input?

7 minutes!

 

Let us know how it goes

 

Update time.

Seems like they're gung ho. Their lifts were all occupied, though, so I showed the guy the pics that have been posted here and the dimensions that sciff5 was kind enough to post from his SFC job as an example. I have a full-day appointment for the 22nd where we will actually try to get this going.

 

I will need a set tooo my 4th gen buddy

 

Good luck Bro! I woulda gone with 1.5" Dom tubing with .120" wall thickness but it was on back order and woulda taken 3 weeks to get here so I went with the .095" wall thickness tubing and figured I'de foam it if it wasnt stiff enough, which I am going to do anyway, seeing how I see little downside to it. Also I still have plenty of ground clearence so you could go with 1" x .120" tubing for the cross bracing stage 2 if you wanted to, unless you have your car slammed.

Again good luck

Keep us updated on whats goin on

 

Thanks for the tips. My car is lowered about 2.4" and ground clearance is at a premium, so we definitely talked about making the design sensitive to that. I'm going to give them a call in the next couple of days so we can start speccing things out.

I did happen to notice that their shop is within walking distance of some kind of steel supplier, so that might help things along.

I also want to let you guys know that I took every opportunity to stress to these guys that if they want to start making them for the community, there would be buyers. I told them that WSP was selling theirs for $250, so if they can match that with a better product, they'll be good.

We shall see. Again, as of now, July 22 is the big day...

 

sounds promising......steel suppiler down the road is always good...again i will hold off on making my own until i find out for sure on these

 

Sweet!
If they could start producing these, that would be awesome!!!!!!


Keep us updated, and good luck!

Mike

 

Any updates, how did the fitting go?

 

They couldn't actually fit me then and there because all their lifts were tied up. Not sure if the communication error was on their part or mine...

The appointment to do this for real was supposed to be this Saturday. I might have to reschedule, though. I will put updates here as they become available.

 

Shops can be tough to deal with, trust me I know. One of them balied out on me after having my car in the shop for 3 days supposedly working on it

 

Yikes, that sucks.

Yeah, that's a big part of why I want to find a day where I am SURE I can bring my car in at the beginning of the day and basically loiter or drop by periodically until they finish it...

 

Maybe a roll cage, or at least something sturdy to attach a 4pt harness.
Did you see the quality of their work on other cars?
Jae

 

Any updates? Has the deal with the shop completely fallen through or you just haven't had time to go back?

 

Time was scarce, and then money became scarce. This is on hold for now.

Sorry guys...

 

I was about to make another thread about SFC(s), since I have a few questions:

- What's the reasoning for curving the end (or ends) & welding to the inside of the body? I've seen ton's of sfc's for 'stangs/firebirds/camaros that are basically long, stout tubing that's welded to the frame rails. Seems to work for them, why not the Max? Done this way, I can see it being quite easy to replicate such an item for us.They also seem to use square rather than round tubing, but that's for another discssion.
-I'm even tempted to go to a local speed shop & ask them to "massage" a domestic sfc to the Max as a last resort. What do you guys think?

 

I would imagine the more points of contact would make for less twisting of the chassis during cornering. I say do it because it will only help...

My .02

 

search for the butterfly brace that miata's have available from www.flyinmiata.com...it looks pretty cool to me, wish they made it for the max!

http://www.flyinmiata.com/index.php?...920%20%2090-97

 

Money? Scarce? How dare you!

Looking forward to an update, man. While I don't think I'll have the $ for it for quite awhile, I'm definitely going to get SFCs ASAP and you're giving me hope.

 

Yeah, don't rub it in. Nearly-weekly round trips between Philly and NYC get really expensive and really time consuming really fast.

 

Nice. I can't really sustain a job while I go to school (not enough time), I have some money saved up but I don't think I have much leeway for... well, for anything.

About how much would this set you back, anyway?

 

Depends do you want the stage 2 cross bracing?

 

Hey Josh, I had a question about your SFCs. Do your stage 1 bars press right up against the undercarriage or do they stand off a bit? I was wondering because it occurred to me last night that if the bars deflected under aggressive cornering, they might thunk against the underbody.

 

You're the guy that has custom sfc's on 5th gen right? What's your appraisal now that you've had them for awhile? I'm relaly interested since I have the same suspension are yourself albeit on a high-mileage '95.

 

They are not pressed up against the underside of the car but they are close. Not close enough that I think they would ever under any circumstances contact the underside of the body but the fabricator did a nice job of tucking them up in there tight so I lost very little ground clearence, maybe half an inch.

The ride home from having the SFCs fabricated I hit one of the largest bumps I've ever hit. I swear the car got slightly airborne and I heard no clunk from the sfcs under the car but it was a brutal hit even with the SFCs.

In general the SFCs make the ride better under all conditions. Before I had them my car used to crash over some bumps with the Eibach springs. Now the car really doesnt clunk or crash at all, not to mention the dash no longer squeeks going around hard corners. I also notice quite a bit of difference in the corners. When pushing the car, it seems to have more grip and feels more predictable in the corners.

The only downside is I think I could have benefitted from thicker tubing. I went with .95 wall DOM tubing with the thought that I'de be able to use structual foam to increase the natural frequency/ increase ridgidity of the tubing but after trying to foam the SFCs and spending 100$ on the process I found I couldent do it.

 

Thx for the update, the more I think of them the more I want them. I'm thinking I'd rather do SFC's than switch from Eibach to Progress.

 

Multiply everything he said by two because your frame is much softer than his was to begin with (4th gen vs. 5.5gen).

 

I'm guessing you meen in terms of what effect they will have on the performance of the car right?

Price should be pretty much the same for 3rd, 4th and 5th gens as they all use the same material about the same amount of material and generally the same amount of labor.

Just want to clarify for the people who are researching SFCs

 

Yes, sorry.

 

If it's any consolation, I suspect thicker walls wouldn't make much difference. Your SFCs are probably already thicker than anything else Nissan used on the chassis. I took a good look under my car last night and was amazed at how thin the metal is at some places. Comparing the thickness of the frame rails to a soda can wouldn't be much of a stretch. Flex is going to happen at the weakest area in your system. That would probably be at the bolts, followed by the welds, the frame rails, and then finally the SFCs themselves.

 

I dunno, depends on how pricey they are to begin with. Ballpark either way?

Anyway, keep us updated, d00df00d.

 

Well it cost me just over 400$ for my setup fabricated installed and painted.

But for just stage 1 I would assume it would be much less money, maybe around 250 you'de really have to discuss it with the shop your dealing with

 

To me, it looks as though the curve is a design feature that compromised functionality and manufacturing simplicity for ease of installation. The problem is that the space between the subframes, where true SFCs would go, is tight. It would be tough to safely get a welding gun in there without having to drop the gas tank and rear axle first. That creates the dilemma of whether you would want to weld SFCs on an unloaded chassis and would there be enough room to put everything back once it's done. (Probably not.)

Instead, Warpspeed chose an attachment point that was easy to reach on the inner body, rather than connect directly to the rear subframe. This means the stresses from the rear suspension are still being carried by the body shell rather than the SFCs. Therefore, these are not true SFCs. For me, this is a big no-no, because a lot of structural pieces attach to the same area, yet Nissan used thin tack-welded flat metal plates to gap the space between the subframes. I assume this was a cost-saving design to enable stretching of the chassis to suit vehicles of different wheelbases, but it is probably the single biggest reason for our flimsy chassis. Regardless, Warpspeed's SFCs seem to get the job done for our cars, based on reviews I've read. The domestic unibody cars either don't have these space constraints or they prioritize strength over everything else, since they can put out tons more HP and RWD twist than us.

I'm still trying to figure out a better solution -- something that would maintain the functinality of true SFCs, yet be easy to install and manufacture/replicate. Right now that little curve at the end is the biggest obstacle. If there was a way to eliminate that, you could do away with a lot of complicated manufacturing steps and possibly even put plans online for those DIYers out there. We'll see...

 

^^ I'd love to see what your final design is like. Ironically, I'm thinking of installing the sfc just to improve the '95 chassis for driveability. This car would probably never see the track. I figure I can pay $200CAD and get softer Progress or the same for some SFC's. I doubt that my rattles will disappear with the Progress, so I'm leaning towards the connectors.

 

Any updates from anyone?

 

Not really an update but I had to respray mine last week because the one layer of paint wasnt enough to keep the surface rust off.

So if you do this make sure to spray them over with 3m undercoat in addition to paint, cause if you live on the ocean like I do paint wont cut it.

I also bottomed out for the first time this past week.. it was over an obsurdly large speed bump.. I didnt even think twice about it cause I dont really bottom out with the EIbachs and SFCs ever but these speed bumps were sick, my mom was behind me and her G35 bottomed out just as hard.