There’s something a lot of car builders like to call “the parts cannon.” That’s when people tend to throw the entire parts catalog at a car without either knowing how a certain part works, or whether if the part works for their application at all.

In the world of performance handling/cornering, there is no shortage of companies happily pushing one item after another all promising to increasing stability, improve input or solve any other number of ailments – and most without any sort of evidence to back their claim.

When it comes to front strut reinforcement bars/tower strut bars, it could be a little questionable. How much extra support could these really provide, especially on modern-engineered cars…right? Well, John Pasemann of USCT Motorsports (US Car Tool) laid it out for Mopar Connection Magazine in no uncertain terms:

Do Strut Bars work?
I had always wondered if front strut reinforcement bars do anything for suspension/handling on a strut style front suspension like we have on the new LX Dodge Charger and LC Dodge Challenger platforms.

So today we built a tool to measure the deflection between the strut towers to see how much, (if any), movement there is when the front end is subjected to hard cornering forces. The result surprised me.

What is a Strut Deflection Tool?
I started with the definition of the problem; How to measure movement between the two strut towers that hold the Upper Strut Mount and the Upper Control Arm? Realizing that the movement might be slight but impactful, (even a 1-2 degree change in caster/camber can make a negative impact in cornering ability by introducing bump steer), I wanted to amplify the relative movement so it could be better seen on video.

After some time under the hood, the simple solution turned out to be the best. We cut one of the prototype Strut Reinforcement Bars in half and bolted each half to its strut tower, then added a bright tape stripe to make the cut ends stand out as they moved relative to each other.

Video and a light
With the Strut Deflection Tools mounted on my 2015 Road & Track Dodge Charger R/T, all we needed was a video camera (or two) and a light so we could document what we saw during some spirited driving. A local empty parking lot provided a quick opportunity for some medium speed, hi force turns and the results surprised me a lot.

The painted ends of each of the Strut Deflection Tools showed an amazing amount of movement, a ¼” or more during a 40 mph turn and the video shows the obvious conclusion; A Strut Reinforcement Bar will help stiffen the front-end chassis of the Dodge Charger LX and Dodge Challenger LC platforms, allowing the suspension to do its job without the unibody flexing and acting like an unintentional spring.