A $48 DIY butterfly brace on an electric NA

weber · Postby **weber** » Wed May 21, 2014 2:32 pm

There's no way it can be this simple while you still have your exhaust pipe. But maybe you can get some ideas anyway (or give _me_ some).
See http://forums.aeva.asn.au/topic980_post51098.html#51098

weber · Postby **weber** » Tue Jun 17, 2014 3:32 pm

I made it work!

See http://forums.aeva.asn.au/forum_posts.asp?TID=980&PID=51462&title=weber-and-coulombs-mx5#51462

speed · Postby **speed** » Wed Jun 18, 2014 7:20 pm

Weber, what does it feel like, big difference and how so???

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weber · Postby **weber** » Wed Jun 18, 2014 7:48 pm

speed wrote:Weber, what does it feel like, big difference and how so???

Hi Speed. You really should read the post in the AEVA forum that I linked above, and the two that follow it, if only to learn why it didn't work at all the first time.

No, I can't say it made a big difference. But it made a noticeable difference. Really stiffening an MX-5, short of a roll-cage, seems to require lots of different braces in different places. In case you can't read the linked article for some reason, here's what I wrote about the effect:

"I eventually got my wish as it turned back into gravel and I accelerated away. Potholes, corrugations, patches of loose gravel, uphill and downhill bends, yahoo! Great stuff. The verdict? ... I think it's Good Enough (TM). Put it this way: If I'd never dríven a Nissan Leaf (whose middle name is "smooooooth"), I'd probably declare the electric MX-5 now much the same in the shudder and shake department as many other cars I've dríven. Just occasionally you hit a certain shaped bump in a certain way and get a shudder, but it decays in about half a second and you're back to sailing over the tops of the corrugations (or at least that's what it feels like)."

And I should reiterate that this DIY butterfly brace design would require modification into something more complex to make it fit an MX-5 with an exhaust system.