I left mine there...I can get the filter out no prob, and I like being able to put my hand down on intake manifold when working on car without worrying about stress on flange/runners.


And +1 to the above. As smart as engineers are, we are also lazy bastards. No engineer would devote effort to designing a brace if there wasn't some vibration/dynamics issue that made it a good measure.

It may be there just so there's never any problems in a half million miles of use, but some of us (like me) are already half way there, and a lot of the miles I put on my car count double - Sav's count nearly 25:1 -.

If you haven't heard the Miata TB shafts break so often because of vibration. I.e Actor at m.net went through at least 3 OEM TB over the last couple of years.

Cant find anything on this over at m.net.

Also did more searching on the brace, and the majority of the peeps over there seem to be pulling them as well.

One of the threads was started by Emilio - about different options of TB shaft and TB upgrades because of the issue

As mentioned above 99% or the people both here and over there are more wine-and-cheesers than racers.
Btw, Actor's car doesn't even have forced induction on it - it is a dedicated CSP autocrosser machine.

OK, so what about aftermarket intake manifolds? They're not braced and I assume that the same vibrations travel through them.

dude like more than half the people here are engineers, me included lol (well student).

Don't ya know, its a shorty hood prop. Or is it a endless supply of aluminum shims to be cut off with a band saw...

I'd assume (hope) a sheetmetal plenum with velocity stacks weighs a hell of a lot less than the OEM cast setup.

Right, I figured that, but part of the argument seems to be that it helps reduce the vibrations causing problems with the TB, if that's really true anyway.

Engineers aren't always right...


I've had mine off for 4 years now, was one of the very first things I did. Beat the shit out of my car on a daily basis and have yet to see failure. No, its not turbo, but that doesn't matter. I still beat the car like it owes me money.

True. The number of people who have removed this brace is enormous. The number of people within that group with throttle plate issues is miniscule. The cars that are being driven hard enough often enough to develop throttle plate problems like this don't have plenums; the ones that do have plenums aren't driven hard enough to develop them.