Stregthning the unibody.

I have been trying to come up with ways to strengthen my unibody without spending too much cash. A full cage will come soon, wich will help ALOT, but for now Im just comming up with other ideas. I looked into the T&J braces, those suckers are pricey and really is nothing to "wow" about, with a bender and a welder you can make those really quick for a hell of a lot less. The other thing is I dont think you can use the common rockrail with those. I have a custom shock hoop in the rear of my XJ and that thing seems like it helps stiffin things up a bit. Now have you ever seen them imports with those "strut tower braces"? Imports are unibodys too and suffer from the frame twisting thus poor handling, a comman upgrade is those braces wich really help. They can be found on anything from Hondas to Porsches. How about putting one on a XJ? I think it would help a great deal and its dosent look hard to make either. Maybe some DOM tubing with 2bends in it, some flanges welded on the ends and bolted right on top of where the shock goes and your done. Thats a high stress area expessaly while flexing so it should really help with that, I really dont think it could hurt it at all. Only thing is, will it fit?

Thoughts, comments, opinions?

I dont disagree that some kind of front bracing will help with body flex, I will say that it's damn near impossible to fit a brace directly to the shock 'tower' area of the XJ. There just isn't room to attach it, and the way that the tower is built distributes the compression forces throughout the whole panel.

There may be some benefit from making smaller support bars that run from the mid fender area back to the center of the rear firewall, one for each side. Kind of like the tower supports that old musclecars have.

Right, thats what I was affraid of.

My old Ram-Air had those type of supports only backwords, they went from the front(where the radiator is located) and bolted to the shock towers, they were about 1/2" thick and 3" wide, it help the car handle much better. I think with a little research, some time, and measurements I can figure out a way to do it and then have them built.