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Stability control + upper strut brace = no accident

1K views 13 replies 9 participants last post by  fju2112 
#1 ·
I'm thankful for the stability control on my b5.5, and for the fact that I bought a strut brace here last year.

My wife was driving in the left lane on the Hutch this week when the minivan next to her decided to drive into her lane. She had to slam on the brakes and swerve (as he unaccountably decided to slow down with her) and steer between the minivan and the barrier, which is very close to the left lane at that point, while honking the horn to wake the guy up. She managed to maintain control and cut a very fine line while braking hard, and I'm sure that the stability control helped the car go where she told it to, while the strut brace enabled her to have fine enough control to keep the line. Without the strut brace, as I and other have posted elsewhere, the steering is so sloppy that there's no way to control it precisely.

Kudos to the car and to this site for giving me the info and opportunity to improve my handling! Next stop 1BE hopefully...
 
#4 ·
I bought a PureMS brace used on this site.

My wife is an extremely competent driver. She saved our asses once when she was driving and I was the passenger; we were driving at speed down a rural highway and some idiot just pulled into the middle of the road and sat there right in front of us. She tore to the side, where there was some extra road b/c of the cross street, and tore right back over and back into the lane; a classic avoidance maneuver. The rear end started jerking around at that point, and she stopped after we swerved back and forth a few times, but we could easily have slammed into the other car or gone right off the road instead...

We just argue about how fast to go and whether passing is good or bad :), but I never doubt her ability.
 
#8 ·
How exactly does a strut tower brace "tighten" up the steering? I have one on my GTI, and during normal driving, you can't even tell it's there....it eliminates some of the body flex in extreme manuevers, but it's really barely noticeable...and this is on a Golf III platform that is very floppy compared to the B5. More likely your wife if much better driver than you thought. And probably not on the mobile phone at the time. Good for her!
 
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