Top End Performance triangulated rear strut bar...

[Cethern]

Ron could you give a little more info about the PDK fabrication bar.

I like the idea of a strut bar but if I were to add camber plates I don't think that will work very wel if the bars are bolted to the struts

[hls30.com]

I just went to the PDK Fabrication site, and I hope they do not realize what being so disrespectful with popups says to a customer.

If anybody connected to them reads this, please patch it through to them.

More than one pop up means you would rather give the business a customer tried to bring to your ecommerce site to someone else. If you don't care for doing your own business any more than that, I don't care about doing business with you.

They may have the best product out there, but they don't want to sell it as much as they want to earn a quarter from popups-in my book they just cut off their nose to spite their face. As a Southerner, I think anyone making the conscious decision to partake in breeding and feeding gnats, and then shoveling them my way has earned the loathsome disrespect they showed me by doing it in the first place.

It isn't like it is difficult to have the popups after the visit, and not in the way of it.

I think the Tep experience will do just fine,

Along those lines, the fitament issues are more than likely exactly what Jayru hinted at: "...the car was already flexed/tweaked a little..." These cars are more than 30 years old, and we all know the stupid stunts the PO pulled...

Will

[240ZMan]

Will, I think the pop ups come because they are using a free/low budget web host for their site. I'm not trying to justify the pop ups as I feel pretty much the same as you do about that. But I doubt they are receiveing any direct payment for click-throughs, rather that's how the free web site host generated their own revenue to keep the site "free".

As a side note, I use Firefox as my browser and have the popup blocking feature turned on, and didn't even notice that they had pop ups. You might consider a new browser, or even upgrading to the just released IE7 as it has better pop up blocking now.

[Ron Carter]

Cethern, you can look at my gallery on this site and see what Mark has done with cars that have camber plates. If you are installing racing camber plates I would suggest a weld in solution instead of a bolt in.

Will, I know that PDK receives no benefit from the popups on their site. The site is free and they are a small organization that works on a thin margin. This is a truely hand made product and works well. I hope you can look beyond the popup issue and see the quality in the product they offer. That being said, most if not all of us have pop up blockers, I had forgottten that they even were there.

[hls30.com]

I visited using both Firefox and IE, neither would grant me landing rights-granted my gnat settings are "0 tollerance".

A real business site can cost as little as $105 a year at godady, a Paypal shopping cart is free. Any business I have ever encountered using free interference paid hosting is not getting enough from its web presence. It is the old adage, jump in with both feet, or stay on the bank especially when the cost is less than 30 cents a day...

How much better can the PDK version be? Adjustment is nice, but just like the repositionable pedals in my truck, I probabaly would never use it. I would verify and correct the distance between the shock towers to get everything out of the brace it was designed for, not use an adjustment to install a brace to hold the suspension in a position that was already out of spec!

Will.

[hls30.com]

Ron,

I am not trying to knock them, even though my response is harsh, I just want to be sure they realize that decision is costing them more money than it is saving them-perception is fact on the spur of the moment, and if it only takes a moment to order and leave money good things can happen, when it takes a moment to get bothered, and another moment to leave, good things don't happen.

I realize that not everyone knows as much or as little as I do about the internet, but if there is a perception problem that stops money coming in, free is way too expensive...

WIll

[Ron Carter]

Will, their choice for hosting was anything but my suggestion. You are entitled to your opinion. I dont disagree with you, at the end of the day it was their decision not mine.

As far as the strut bar, well there is a HUGE difference, look past their website and look at the engineering that went into their solution and you will see the value. The adjustment was added after manufacturing many bars and finding no two cars were alike.

This solution does not have to be removed to adjust the valves, this system ties into the swaybar mounts to protects from damaging the framerails with an oversized swaybar. This system trianglates into the firewall and works very effectively for a bolt on solution, and it is modular.

There are many people who have purchased this bar an have noticed quite a difference.

[hls30.com]

Ron, Thanks for the overview, I still haven't seen it, though I have found several sites with serious posts that sing its praises, so I have no way of comparing anything except the name and intended use. From the sound of your enthusiasm, they obviously are far better at engineering than establishing an ecommerce site!

I didn't mean to imply in any way that situation was your doing!

Will

[ZIII]

Well, I just purchased a rear bar... should be here in a few days and I will let you know....at least there will be one more opinion. I must say, that on the phone, TEP (Jeff) was very nice and helpful and took his time with me which I appreciated. Now, I wait for the bar to arrive.

[=Enigma=]

I too was very put off by the number and type of pop-ups on the PDK site, but i am also aware that they are probably not very internet saavy and don't realize the disdain they are causing among those of us that are. That being said I was able to look past it and appreciate the work that they put into the bars.

I have since moved over completely to Firefox for casual Internet browsing, and use I.E only for business sites and applications whuch require its use. Firefox in it's stock form, still suffers from the type of pop-ups being used on their site(JavaScript), however, with a nice little add-on(browser extension) called NoScript, I see no pop-ups from this site(untrusted) or any other for that matter. If you hate pop-ups as much as I, this is definintely worth getting. Here's the extension page where this tool can be obtained free of charge. Well worth the 10-30 seconds of time it takes to go to the page and install it.

https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/722/

Hope this helps.

[Cethern]

Ron

I found their site for some reason it would not come up under a google search...Anyway I like both bars. With the front frame bars those will take away a lot of the force from the bluk head bars to where it looks like it will have less of a chance of bending that area.

In one of their pic's I saw where either PDK or the owner of the car made the bars work with camber plates.

For me thats the way I will go when I'm ready for strut bars. To bad the rears are only for a 240. I guess the inside in a 240 is more narrow than a 280..

For the rear bar I will most likely use TEP. Unless the I get the roll bar made to brace the strut towers.

On a side note I use Firefox but I have had a problems with it not connecting to where IE 6 will. That gets old it could be my connection or something with my setup.

Cethern

[jmortensen]

Unless the I get the roll bar made to brace the strut towers.

If you are going to make a roll bar, then definitely run the hoop support bars to the strut towers. You can run them to the front of the tower, or to the trapezoidal area outside of the struts.

Even with that done, a strut tower is STILL a good idea. The TEP bar is good, PDK is also good (PDK's front bar looks a lot better than TEP's) and the other option is to take another piece of your roll bar tube and weld it between the strut towers. This is the best way to go in my opinion, no heims joints or bolts to allow movement...