Sam Strano

iTrader: (41)

I appreciate the responses! And I have braces in stock so no problem there.

People often ask me why I didn't design this to fit with a Hotchkis brace. One reason is it would have made it more complicated to do, And you already have guys on the internet thinking a piece that I shipped for free at $109 is a rip-off. And then you have other people trying to rip off the idea with cheap pieces of metal bent 90° without any supporting structure, and a thin little piece that they're stop screws into.

But the real reason is the Hotchkis itself is not as effective as the more basic style braces. I completely understand that it's easier to get off, at least in theory. Because you pull two bolts and the whole brace is off except for the stanchions. Except for the fact that it only is four bolts to take the other type of braces off. It does absolutely look better. But it's also not as strong. The way that brace has kickbacks in it cause it to flex more in compression. And the way it bolts to the stanchions that bolt to the shock tower, well that's a pivot point. And part of the reason you want to put a shock tower base on the car is to eliminate movement. So that brace adds a little bit of supporting structure if you were to look through the front bumper and imagine the tops of the tower squeezing together. However if you look at the angle of the towers they actually want to tilt up and in if they're going to move. And there's nothing adding any structure to help with the up part when you have a bolt that it can pivot on.

​​​​​ As always I'm much more interested in function over form. Not everybody is and that's absolutely cool. Hotchkis is one of the many brands I sell.I certainly don't have any huge hate for them or anything like that. And I do think it is the best looking STB for the car. But when I was designing my master cylinder brace I had to consider the fit of it, and where I would recommend using it, and typically that's on cars that are more demanding of the brakes. Now it's such a big benefit it turns out that people see a benefit even on the street anyway, which was a bonus. But of course that wasn't after the fact kind of discovery, So trying to get around every kind of brace out there wasn't my main concern.

Again this is not a judgment on what brace you guys have or want to run. That stuff is largely personal, and it is definitely an item you could consider an aesthetic piece as well. I greatly appreciate that folks are understanding the master cylinder brace product enough that they're willing to use it and make it work with their preferred shock tower brace!

landstuhltaylor

iTrader: (6)

Sam

I was going to ask you more directly but might as well ask this where others can see it. Has anyone used this with a manual brake master conversion yet? Wondering if a longer jackscrew would work or if it's way more involved than that. I have a feeling I know the answer.

Sam Strano

iTrader: (41)

Well obviously I don't have manual brakes, and most people don't. Personally I'm not a fan of them because they require a lot more aggressive pad to physically get the car to slow down properly and easily. After just spending a year in a couple cars with manual brakes and many many master cylinder changes and many many brake pad changes had much prefer to have the booster.

Having said that I suppose it's possible, but removing the booster is going to move the master cylinder far further away from the shock tower. So I don't really think that would be the best solution, because it would take a much longer standoff to accomplish the task.