I have some stiff SFI padding on my double hoop. It's still very stiff, like plastic (meant for helmets, still) but it's surely softer than steel. Added a little extra peace of mind.

 

+1 that stuff wont do dick without a helmet. Then again my head is nowhere near the bar so its mute point in my case

 

I have the frog arms, I installed them at the same time I took off my upper strut tower brace and the car did not seem to change in feel. If you have fab skills you can just weld some re-enforcements on like others have pointed out.

 

I had the Tuckin-99 arms on a street car. The jounce after a pothole was diminshed, but I never tracked the car.

 

I have chrome vents.

 

I had the same stuff and scrapped it for the foam flavor. If I hit my head on the bar without a helmet, either way I'm going to die, so I might as well make my trip to hell a comfortable one.

 

just got done installing the frog arms i got for christmas. I didn't waste any time getting started, though holy crap was this a tedious process.

I've read some people do it in 3 or 4 hours.. Took me a little over 7 hours, including some additional cleaning / lubing / rubberized undercoating.

Hopefully i can drive it tomorrow then i'll post back impressions.

 

just got a chance to drive a few minutes. My neighborhood is filled with rough roads, potholes and has a railroad track with several crossings so I was able to got a good feel for any difference they may have made.

My first impression was when backing out of my driveway. I actually drive around my other car, going off the driveway onto the grass. That transition immediately somehow felt more solid as if the front of the car was one piece.

Driving around, the car felt more solid overall, with less front end crashing / movement.

I find it hard to describe the feeling, as it still 'crashes' over larger bumps (my illuminas are set to 5 / max hard), but somehow it just feels nicer. Smaller imperfections and repeating bumps (like 100 small potholes on a super crappy street) are handled much nicer, they don't reverberate through the car.

One downside -- it was almost 4 a.m. when i was tightening up the passenger door hinge bolts and I didn't lift it up while tightening as i did the driver's side... End result is that it's a little droopy and makes a horrible squeak when going over bigger bumps which is interfering with getting a really good take on the effect of the frog arms.

Also I don't know if this is just placebo or reality but i did a quick "emergency lane change" at around 30-35 mph and it felt super flat / immediate.

Disclosure: I recently put tokico illuminas on the car. The frog arms, to me, did make a nice improvement on top of the illuminas. My impression before installing the frog arms was that the illuminas made the car much much much better, even at "5" setting, BUT the front end was still loose feeling with regards to bump absorption / feedback.

Rambling addition: I guess a good way to put this would be that the frog arms make small to medium bumps feel like this: "BUMP". Previously, it was more like "BUMP SHIMMY SHAKE", most notably manifesting in shaken kidney syndrome (Yes, my car no longer feels like i'm being laterally shaken left & right over rough roads).

 

I made my own. 3/4 square tubing, hits all the same attachment points. Haven't driven w/ it yet, still getting the car back together. But I did the same thing in my STI, these braces are more popular on that car, and there is an OEM brace there from the factory - it's just a stamped junky piece. My sti is quite, quite stiff, in a good way.

The pos harbor freight 90amp wire welder is an awesome toy. I've built my own replicas of appx $1000 worth of commercial braces, plus a lot of seam welding. Good bang for buck.

 

Thanks for the review ctxspy. I have been on the fence about these just hard to pull the trigger for stiffening the front when I can get frame rails instead - although I'm not so sure I'd want to drill 14 holes to install them.