My BT Tech Strut Tower Brace is on the car now.

I got home from work a little late this evening, and there it was, about three days earlier than expected from the tracking number.

Thank you Brian. Tis truely a thing of beauty. And within 1.5 hours, it was on the car. Only problem I ran into was dropping one of the bolts that held my smaller relay box to the cowl pan thingy.

 

Sorry for my delay in getting back to those with questions. It was not raining when I started to install the brace, but began raining once I got everything spread out all over the driveway. This is not unusual at all here in the Pacific Northwest. No true Pacific Northwesterner would abort an outdoor activity due to some traces of liquid sunshine that were not expected. (Sniffle, Sniffle, Achooooo!!!!). Excuse me, I thing I am catching a cold somehow.

Suffice it to say I was cold enough and wet enough that I didn't test drive the installation until the next morning on the way to work.

Now I am not sure what the proper handling evaluation terminology to use it, but I will say that the car seems to be better Planted on the road, and Fertilized for solid root growth. After first adding a BT Tech Stiffening plate, and then Nokian WR tires, my handling was already greatly improves such that I did not notice the imediate Night and Day difference as I did with the first two mods, but over two or three days of driving, you begin to notice the difference in better responsiveness in my non-hotrod style of driving. There is less guess work involved in steering where I can predict better exactly how much to turn the wheel to place the car in any desired path. I don't know, maybe it is called less Oversteer, Understeer, or Fade.

I don't have any strain guages handy, but i was thinking I could remove the bolt from one end of the bar, add a light under my hood and mount a video camera to see how much the bar moved back and forth in it's otherwise captive mounting location, but that seems like a bunch of work since I already know I like the improvement.

Plus, it got me a Special Personal invitation to the next Portland Hybrid Synergy Drive Meetup Group get together abpve and beyond the standard warm optn invitation. I'll probably just remove the hood from the car for the HSD meetup, and then one of our junior members will probably volunteer to lay across the cowl of my car and watch for the displacement as I do some slalums.

 

Yes, it is a "Nice to Have" enhancement. But one that I feel can increase safety. Toyota designs the car to meet a what they consider acceptable level of safety, but anything that improves handling responsiveness can help in accident avoidance.

There are countless things Toyota engineeers must leave off the car to maintain competative pricing and profits. This is why the car doesn't come from the factory with dual rear Video Entertainment package with Satellite TV and full video library on hard drive included.