A question long in my mind.

Would there be any sense or point to adding stablizer bars or stiffening rods between the firewall and inner fender tops on a '66 Big Olds?

I noticed long ago that 70's era big cars had them here & there and I also note their deployment on many other makes & models - though they seem more common on unibody cars like vintage mustangs. I suspect it's a much bigger help in those cars than my full frame cars, but am wondering if they could help us too.

Thoughts?

Chris

 

Vintage Mustang bars were not for the fenders, they were run to and between the shock towers for structural stability. If the factory felt the need for them they would have been installed and they did in some models from the 50's and 70's and 80's where they felt it was necessary. Let me ask this question, your car has been around for 56 years, have you noticed any damage to your fenders or surrounding structure? To me all they would be is an obstruction getting in the way when I worked on the car.

 

You’re right on about them being in the way when you go to work on the car. I have not noticed any fender damage. And you’re right on that the factory might have used them if they felt the need. But the factory had unit costs to worry about too.

But my 98 convertible has a noticeable cowl shake in certain bumpy road situations and I was wondering whether such an addition might reduce that.

It’s along the same line of thinking as adding rear sway bars to both my ‘66 big cars. They helped. As did the disk brakes. As did the HEI. And so on.

So it’s not really about solving a current problem, it’s really whether the car could be made better by application of these supports - and, to your point, whether it would be worth the maintenance access hassle.

Views and debate most welcome.
Chris

 

The factory installed those reinforcing bars on Vista Cruisers.

I've wondered if the factory engineers thought that the flexibility of a narrow frame over that long wheelbase gave too poor a steering response (the steering gear is attached to the frame horn). High-end Cutlass handling kits include frame horn tie bars.

So, the engineers had their eye on whatever the problem was. Your car must not have such a serious problem, perhaps because the frame is wider or stiffer, or the front frame horns are tied together better.

Here's what I base my thinking on... When I got my 1970 442, a fun exercise for a kid was to rapidly turn the steering wheel left and right. The left and right fenders rose and fell but the car continued in a perfectly straight line. I found it hilarious. But it revealed a serious problem with lack of turn-in response. One could imagine how badly a Vista Cruiser without reinforcing bars would fail that test.

 

Structurally, stabilizer bars from the cowl to the core support don't do jack for steering response or frame stiffening. Note that the core support still has rubber mounts to the frame. Do you really think this is doing anything for stiffness? All the bars do is keep the hood opening from parallelogramming. The do nothing for handling or steering response.

 

Many thanks for cleaning this up. I’ve been looking at this for decades and wondering.

It was a mystery to me as to what these bars could/would do, hence the question.

I’ve got no issues at all with parallelogramming, so this is, as we say, fixing what ain’t broke.

Cheers
Chris

 

Thanks for the structural lesson, Joe.