I am thinking about getting front and rear strut bars for my 2005 Civic. I am wondering if I will feel an improvement or if strut bars are a scam. I don't think that they are a scam, after all some cars come with them from the factory, but I am not sure if I should get strut bars or not, and I am not sure if all strut bars work the same, or if it has to be expensive to work well. Thanks.

 

It's not a scam. But it needs to be well made. It's usefulness is not night and day, it's just structural reinforcement. It doesn't add horsepower.

 

Agree 100% on Tyson's comments. It's entirely a tactile improvement, it might make the car feel more solid but it's not likely to improve performance in any measurable way. That being said, I'd be willing to argue that the difference will be more noticeable on your mac strut car than it would be on the older dwb Honda chassis.

 

I wouldn't get hung up on the word "strut" for it's benefit on a dwb suspension.

By bridging the two sides of a gaping hole between your suspension, even better by triangulating or trapezoidal 4pt shapes, you increase lateral stiffness of the chassis.

It's difficult to quantify, there's no metric to judge it by, but it's a goal of every good chassis design to stiffen the "5th spring".

And a strut bar does it right where it could be most beneficial.

Stiffening the lower subframe is another place of direct benefit. But like I said, you need to do it right to get any benefit.

 

Tyson knocking it out . . . my only question would be if you are actually racing the car or not.

If this is a daily driver and you never track the car, there's probably a hundred things you could spend your money on and notice a bigger difference.

Personally I see "strut bars" trying to be the easy/kind of temporary street car version of just doing a roll cage. If you were actually building a race car, you wouldn't necessarily need the "strut bars" I see online because a well-designed and executed cage should do all of that for you.

If you're taking the civic to a handful of nasa/scca events a year and have already spent money in suspension, tires, and brakes, and don't want the hassle of a full cage, then sure.

 

If you can get really wide sticky tires, high dollar suspension with the right angles in order to make you feel like someone is pushing on the side of your face when you are going around a corner, then yes, they will make a difference. If you are running stock suspension, and some jankey 13" wheels, then no, it won't. So your answer is... It depends.