Considering a Slightly Custom Chassis Brace

[RussMcB]

I've had an idea in my head for a while. I'm getting ready to start it, but wanted to get thoughts from people who might be smarter than me.

When I first bought my ZR-1 last year someone was offering an R&D X-brace for sale. I bought it, haven't installed it yet.

From what I've seen and read, my gut feeling is the Vette 2 Vette brace's design has a better chance of reducing flex and movement since it is not all in the same two dimensional plane like the X-brace. To be honest, I don't think the X-Brace can do a lot by itself, but I can imagine the V2V system introducing stiffness.

So, I had this great idea (maybe), to mount my X-brace and add (strong) brackets to also accept the long rods used by the V2V system, hopefully getting the benefits of both designs.

The two things I'm a little concerned about are:

1) If I add the V2V rods after I've mounted the X-Brace, and then tighten the rods per instructions*, will that introduce some sort of unwanted twist into the X-Brace?

To counter that, perhaps I can delay permanently tightening the X-Brace mounts until after the V2V adjustment.

2) The R&D X-Brace weighs A LOT! Since my main goal is a stiffer, quieter chassis (especially when topless), and I'm not too concerned with ultimate performance, I'll probably go ahead with this project, but it sure goes against instincts to bolt on something so heavy, to gain performance.

* The instructions for adjusting the V2V rods have something to do with tightening them until you have a specific distance between the windshield and the targa bar (that's my understanding. I haven't seen or read the instructions personally).

What do you think?