Barry's
strengthening bars
Good friend of our site Barry, has just finished refurbishing the rear rod ends and tie bars on his good looking Delta. If it's like the rest of the car, the job will be a good 'un! although the diff cradle put up a bit of a fight.
Barry was relaxing after the back end job, searching the web for more Delta ideas, and saw pictures of two Deltas with front suspension strengthening bars. There were two different types, one was a linked 'x' frame joining both side suspensions with a frame under the engine, shown on the yellow Evo. The other used a separate frame on each side to strengthen the suspension tie bars, leaving the engine clear underneath, that's on the red car.
Barry chose the latter, and I'll hand over to him now....
X frame with suspensions linked
Individual suspension strengthening
Also note the safe and useful central jacking point on the red car
Here's Barry's report on the project
The story goes something like this;
I got the idea to source them when searching the internet and saw these 2 cars, with a variation of each fitted, both look well prepared, and I thought the cross braces weren’t necessary for me and the great British roads.
So managed to source the pair from a chap that was selling on Austrian eBay, he had made them himself, and when the auction ended he had no bids. (A very limited market I suppose?)
I contacted him after the sale had ended and managed to do a deal with him direct and a few days later by dhl the sizeable package arrived.
The rods were in bare steel with good welding that I finished off with a flappy grinder to make them a little more presentable ready for painting, which I didn’t mind at all. At least when you see an item in bare metal you can see the quality of the welds an it is not hidden by paint or powder coating.
The first thing to do was mock the system up and decide how I was going to fit them, (all a bit on the hoof really.) The front plates were removed, but all the rest of the wishbones etc was left “loosely” on the car.
The only way to fit them was to do the long legs first, then wind in the adjuster cleverly built into the rods, to locate into the front pegs in the front crossmember.
It is not possible to fit as one complete unit. I know I tried it first.
Take apart, paint, learn a little on the dry run, then refit once dry.
As the bolt fixings are through a tube, the wish bone bush bolts had to be changed to Allen head bolts to go vertical through and into the chassis holes. I fitted plastic dust caps over the ends of the tubes at the end just for neatness. OCD on my part.
The overall appearance, I think, looks great, and the turn in is improved too, I thought that ground clearance may have been an issue, but at its lowest point it is the same as the exhaust flexi, so no real problem there, also helped by me changing to standard ride height shortly afterwards. So I gained about 30mm in height there.
Along the way, other consumables were fitted at the same time which included new M10 nuts washers and bolts, power flex bushes which I already had on the car, and new bolts to the front plates back into the front crossmember.
All in all a nice little project I think?
If you want any more info just drop me a note.
To the right is the bracing kit installed on one side, it looks really impressive, the fit and finish are factory standard, Barry has used Allen head bolts to secure the tubular mountings to the cross member, and shielded the bolt heads with plastic covers.
As Barry writes, the equipment is no lower than the exhaust so it poses no
clearance problems.
I'm sure Barry's car will feel even more solid on turn-in than the standard Delta, and it looks a million dollars!
Here's Barry's Delta at home. It's a beautifully finished car, with many sympathetic improvements.
I like the new suspension, and I'm very taken with the brake cooling ducts!
We thank Barry for sharing this, if you want more information from Barry send us a message and I'll forward into him.
