Hey guys. I'm looking at putting a diff brace on the car this spring. I was wondering if the '94+ cars benifit from this mod? In the '94 and up cars there are two braces that attach to the body of the car and to the rear suspension sub frame. I'm guessing that this will reduce the wheel hop but still leave the diff to flop around on it's poor old 11 years old bushings????
Thanks.

 

Yes a diff brace will help, I have one on my '94 car. I can't say if it helps the diff last longer as my diff gave up in December, but logically it should...
Probably worth replacing the 11 year old parts while you are at it

 

I've replaced so many 11 year old parts on the car in the las seven years it's almost new

 

My 94 wheel hops with the best of them, I even snapped one of factory braces and dropped the drive shaft.

 

Unless you love listening to tranny noise and regularly drag the car using slicks, I would avoid a tranny brace. There is no need for it. If your bushings are worn out, replace them with some stiffer bushings and leave it at that.

 

I noticed a huge difference with a diff brace (KG parts). Stiffened up the drive train nicely. No wheel hop at all, and I hardly noticed any extra noise or rattles from it.

 

Really? I've seen several complaints about people hearing all of those lovely transmission noises. If they didn't add noise, I would run one. Right now I'm getting wheel hop accelerating from a roll in 1st gear...

 

Yeah, I never really had any problem with noise (even when I ran a fairly quiet exhaust with a stock main cat). I'm prety **** about crap like that, too. Tranny braces will rattle your car to pieces, but the KG parts diff brace is fairly tame.

I'm running 385 rwhp right now and although I get no real traction in first gear (just burnouts, time for different tires ), I get no wheel hop at all.

Some people find that their exhaust flange hits the brace... my mechanic cut out a little piece out of the brace to solve that problem.

 

Ok, now I'm getting interested. Are you still running stock diff bushings?

 

Be carefull with that " No wheel hop at all"
I used to have some elcrapo tires on a set of wheel I bought and I didn't get any wheel hop. Little did I know it was due to the tires having very little traction. When I started using AO32Rs I jumped all over the place. The thing I'm worriede about is now when under hard throttle I hear and feel a banging from the rear that wasn't there before. I have the solid trailing arms so they may be helping cause that noise by yanking on the control arms.

 

Yes, with 76k on them.

 

Where can you get the KG brace?

 

Solid diff mounts do the job very nicely.

 

www.kgparts.com

 

i actually didn't get much noise transfer when I ran the KGParts diff brace either. The only reason I removed it is b/c the bolts loosened and stripped the chassis holes on one side. I can't say that I noticed a huge difference in noise transfer w or w/o it, but my exhaust (dp, mp, RB cb) does run a bit loud so that might have overpowered any noise from the diff brace.

 

i installed my kg parts brace and noticed the noises and i still get wheel hop you can hear all the noises from the rear.
on a side note i dont understand how supporting the center diff keeps the wheels from hoping if its an independent rear suspension it seems the only way to eliminate it would be changing struts or springs! but i did it cause every one said it helps but it did not help me

 

I have the KG Brace and it does help with wheel hop. I do get some high RPM vibration (6,500RPM+) along with some tranny noise when at low speeds. The vibration isn't too terrible, but I would bet that some of it is due to me having worn bushings.

 

I have potenza S03's with about 45% tread on them. They are not the stickiest tires, but they grip very well.


That's strange that you are getting vibration... I never heard of that. Do you get the vibration without the brace as well?