Strut Bar Basics

Basically, these bars connect the strut towers together. The effect of connecting the towers together is to reduce the amount of flex the body of the car has when going around a turn. The technical details take up pages, so they will be spared for right now. In a nutshell, the bar works to keep both tires on the road at the same camber, or angle of the tread on the tire to the road surface.

One of the benefits a lot of Elantra owners notice upon installation is how the car does not feel so jittery when hitting bumps in the middle of a turn at higher speeds. Basically, you don't have to wrench down on the steering wheel mid-turn when hitting a bump going rapidly. That is the experience the initial writer of this article has had with the strut bar on their car.

A strut bar will make the car more composed when hitting mid-turn bumps. That is the primary benefit for a daily driver. Is it worth the money for a daily driver? A qualified yes, especially if you live in an area with bumpy roads and do a lot of driving.

A rear strut tower bar/brace is especially beneficial to the XD hatch. The strut tower bar stablizes the strut towers, which have minimal support due to the design of the car. Adding one on the hatch vehicles makes the frame less apt to bend/twist if it were in a rear end collision. The frame members are integrated to the body, but the frame portion is a square tubular section that stops right in front of the rear wheel well and begins again right behind the rear wheel well. The gap between these two square tube sections is not as strong as the portions of the car with the square tubing attached to it.