TCE rear knuckle braces

[SHOZ123]

Anyone installed a set of these? There is a machined flat area cut out of the hex. Which way should this be oriented?

 

[twr]

It's there to miss something on the back of the knuckle IIRC.

 

[Shoaz]

If you have the long struts in the rear it's there to clear the strut. It'll be obvious during installation whether you have long struts and how to orient the brace to clear them.

If you have the short struts in the rear then it doesn't matter at all.

 

[SHOZ123]

I got the short struts and this is on my '97. I try fitted them and could see nothing in the way.

 

[FOSHO94]

what exactly to rear knuckle braces do?

 

[Slo-Sho]

Add weight.

 

[FAST4DR]

what exactly to rear knuckle braces do?

On the rear knuckle there are two "ears" at the bottom of the knuckle. The lateral arms(the ones that go to the center of the car) bolt to the "ears" on the knuckle. The knuckle brace goes between these "ears" and ties everthing together as a unit. Instead of the bolt going from the center of the knuckle into the "ear" and then the arm attaching and a bolt. With the knuckle brace, you unbolt the arms, take out the bolt, put the knuckle brace(straight piece of metal) between the ears, and then put the bolts in the opposite way and into the knuckle brace. This ties everthing together into one unit. I have a picture, but I'm on my laptop in bed and the pictures are on the desktop.

Will

 

[Shoaz]

As I understand it the knuckle braces were something developed at Bondurant (by Todd, I believe) to address issues that they were seeing with the SHO instructor cars. I don't know what sort of failures that they were having, but the brace was put in to add strength to reduce the probability of a failure. Todd could enlighten us more if he so chooses.

If your car is a street machine I don't see much reason to add one of these. If you do road course time with your car, the additional weight is peanuts considering the consequences of a preventable rear suspension failure on a high-speed corner somewhere. I just ran PIR again yesterday, and coming off the banking onto the front straight is fairly high pucker factor as far as potential failure is concerned IMHO. The right-hand tires and suspension pieces are very heavily loaded and it's one of those places where you know that any kind of failure there is going to be bad. I like my knuckle braces. They're definitely staying in.

 

[FAST4DR]

Knuckle brace......

 

[SHOZ123]

What I noticed is it will give you a uniform distance between the two arms. One spindle was tight and the other was loose.

 

[FOSHO94]

they seem to be a fairly inexpensive part too, like $70

 

[DHMag]

Knuckle brace......

are those GM control arms with aftermarket poly bushings(and added zerks) ? if so, could i get some info about them please ?

 

[Shoaz]

They're BMR control arms. I thought it was a picture of my suspension when I first saw it.

 

[FAST4DR]

are those GM control arms with aftermarket poly bushings(and added zerks) ? if so, could i get some info about them please ?

As shoaz says, they are BMR control arms.