I am looking into repainting my car and I am trying to raise the shock tower a bit to avoit the upper control arms from punching through them again.I was thinking about buying some square steel tube and it comes in 11 and 14 gauge.That seemed like the simplest way to fabricate the box section that needs to be raised.Any other suggestions?

 

Any ideas or suggestions?

 

I've only seen pictures of a few cars that had it done, but you only need to use sheet metal as far as I can tell. The shock mounting point doesn't need to be changed, just the metal to the outside of it. Square tubing seems like major overkill...probably just a sheet metal as thick or thicker than the stock material would be fine. Just make a raised section that can clear the UCA and weld it up nicely and you should be fine with that. Hopefully others who have done it can chime in, since I don't have any first hand experience.

 

Like extended top hats? Im confused pics?

 

think about the upper control arms in a civic. if the car is dumped, the arms will hit the shock tower. i think he is talking about giving the upper arm more room to travel.

ive only seen pictures of one guy that cut out a small square in the shock tower to allow for more room.

 

Here are two pics of what I am talking about and the reason I said to use square tube is to eliminate welding and smoothing out welds and reducung the amount of plastic used on the shock tower to reduce the chance of cracking from vibration.

 

Now that is neat- never seen that before

 

Seems like the only logical way to avoid the uca's from punching through the tower.I dont want to hear about raising the car or removing the uca's I am just looking for some suggestions on the easiest and least time consuming way to raise them thanks

 

Well, there is no way to do that without welding...square tubing or not. Like I said though, I think that's overkill. A good weld should just need to be grinded smooth with a skim coat of metal glaze. I wouldn't worry about it cracking out because that technique is used commonly for bays. Personally, it's a project I'd leave to a shop that knows their stuff.

Here's another picture I just found searching around:

 

Bakertime I understand that it needs to be welded either way what I meant is that less work needs to be done with the square tube to make the raised section.The square tube will only need to be welded to the shock tower and capped off this way it eliminated all the work needed to get both sides identical and smooth.

 

bumping this old thread sorry. Did you end up doing this to your car?