rear strut brace

[sam74260]

theres a rear strut brace on ebay from a '72, i have a early '74. just curious if its the same for my car, msa doesnt show 74. thanks [

Edited July 2, 2010 by sam74260

[Z Tyler Z]

Should be the same

[sam74260]

i guess its worth a shot, its only at 25 bucks right now, and its local

[Zedyone_kenobi]

For what it is worth, when I added mine, the whole car squeaked far less going up and down my driveway and the car felt more solid. It is a great mod that is not intrusive

[TomoHawk]

Higuys,

I'm interested in adding one to my '78, but I would still like to keep the covers on the seatbelt retractors. IMO, a strut brace that is kinda flat sounds like it would work and still let you slip some luggage in the back. I figure you'd need to notch the seatbelt retractor cover to suit.

Is there a strut brace that fits the bill?

thxZ

[bc280z]

I'm also very curious about this. Cusco brings up a rear brace for the 240z but nothing for 260/280z I'm just wanting to know if it will fit before ordering one.

[bpilati]

Aren't the dimension for 240, 260 and 280 all the same? Did the strut towers change that much?

[hls30.com]

The rear suspension changed, notably the thickness of the strut insulators-but as a complete assy the rear suspensions are interchangeable-at some point the interior pieces are not interchangeable-I can't remember exactly how the false floor in some of the later 280Z affected that, but I would think that a strut bar would fit all coupes 69-78 with the 2+2 being different.

[zKars]

The strut towers on the late 74-78 cars is quite a bit taller (closer to the ceiling) than the earlier ones. Since the struts are angled inward, I'de guess the tops of the struts are a bit closer together, so the 240 rear strut bar may have to be shortened some. May be enough length adjustment in some of the designes to make it work anyway. The seat belt retractor stuff on top sure gets in the way of all this for sure.

Always wondered why they changed that strut height. Don't suppose it was the seat belts? To put a retractor style shoulder belt in, they had to move it from its earlier mounting point. Using the top of the shock tower made sense, but it was too low. So they raised it, and had to add that fat insulator on the strut to compensate. That's my guess.

Someone needs to measure across of the center of the struts on a 280 and 240 and report the difference.

Edited August 15, 2012 by zKars

[bc280z]

76 280z is 32.5in eye to eye on the hole used to access the top of your strut insert. (sorry if thats unclear, it's the best way i can think to describe it.) Would someone be so kind as to measure their 240z for me?

[prezucha]

I just measured on my 1970 240z from the tiny hole in the center of the strut cover cap to the other and it's 33". Maybe 1/16" less but very close to 33".

[EuroDat]

My 280z is 32.67in (830mm) from center hole to center hole. It looks like the only difference is in the trimmings.

The braces I have seen are adjustable and I would expect they would accomadate the 1/3in diffenence mentioned in the thread.