1992 Eagle Talon:
Aftermarket Strut Tower Bar Installation

Installation Procedure (front):

1. Pop the hood and clean the strut towers. Unless you keep your engine compartment spotless, there is probably grime on the top of the strut towers. Since at least some of that grime is probably sand, you'll want to clean it before installing the braces, as you don't want the sand to grind away at either the towers or the braces.
   pics
2. Remove the two 14mm nuts that hold the struts to the towers. I removed the two nuts on the passenger side, placed the strut tower bar on the studs, then tightened the nuts finger tight before removing the nuts on the driver's side.
   pics
3. Now, adjust the distance between the mounting flanges by holding the loose flange in one hand and rotating the bar with my other hand to bring the flanges closer together. Once the spacing was right, I placed the second flange over the studs on the driver's side tower and tightened the strut tower nuts. Don't forget to finish tightening the nuts on the passenger side!
4. Now, tighten the jamb nuts so the strut tower brace doesn't loosen while driving.
5. That's it! Here's the completed installation: pics

Installation Procedure (rear):

1. Pop the cover off the interior trim pieces inside the trunk--just pull them upwards or use a screwdriver to pry the lower edge away from the lower trim piece.
   Here is a picture of the area we will be working with:
   pic
   ...and with the cover removed:
   pic
2. Remove the dust cap from the strut towers. I didn't realize they needed to be removed, and therefore removed them a little later. However, having the dust cap removed should make it easier to cut the trim panel.
3. Next, you will need to cut a hole in the side trim panel for the strut tower bar. Sorry--there's no way around it. You can't have a strut tower bar in the rear of the car with the trim panels in place, without cutting a hole for the bar to exit through the side of the trim panel. Just leaving the top trim piece out won't cut it (sorry--bad pun :).
   
   Place the strut tower bar on the strut attach bolts to get the approximate width of the hole you will need to cut. Hint: the hole must be wide enough to allow you to fit a wrench over the nut that attaches the bar to the mounting plates, so expect about a two inch wide hole. Mark the cut line with a Sharpie or similar. Believe it or not, the easiest tool to use to actually cut the hole is a razor knife. I used a box cutter with a new blade, but an X-Acto knife would work just as well. I tried a coping saw first, but found that the razor knife made a neater cut with much less effort.
   
   I would also recommend using some sandpaper to smooth the edges of the cut, just to make the installation look neater. Those of you who suffer from obsessive-compulsive disorder may wish to obtain some channel with which to trim the cut. I'll be picking some up for my car on my way home from work tomorrow :)
   
   Here's what the finished cut should look like...well, sort of. This is the cut made with the coping saw; it was too small, and I ended up using the razor knife to enlarge the hole later:
   pic
4. Use a 14mm socket or wrench to remove the nuts from the struts, then place the mount plate over the bolts and reinstall the nuts.
   pic
5. Once the mount has been installed on both sides of the car, install the brace (the bar itself) between the tower mounts, and tighten the brace appropriately.
   
   You have a choice here: you can either install the brace in tension (slightly smaller than the space between the towers so that it pulls the towers together), in compression (slightly larger than the space between the towers so that it pushes the towers apart) or neutral (it fits perfectly in the space, and neither pushes against the towers nor pulls the towers together until loaded by some external force).
   
   It seems to me that compression is the best way to install the bar. If the bar is already loaded to push the tops of the towers apart, then any force that acts to push the bars together--such as one side of the car lifting in response to cornering forces or bumps in the road--will be immediately damped by the bar...sort of like pre-stressed concrete. On the other hand, loading in tension will worsen any forces that try to lift one side of the car, since the bar will help pull that side upwards. Leaving the bar neutral would require any forces on the car to load the bar before it works to stiffen the suspension. However, this is all analysis a priori; I haven't tested this emperically, so use your own best judgement :)
6. Tighten the lock nuts on the bar, reinstall the trim covers, and that's it--you're done!
   
   Here's the completed installation:
   pic
   Yes, that's a booster seat for my three year old between the front seats and the strut tower bar. She likes the sound "Daddy's car" makes at WFO throttle. I'm sooo proud of her! 7:~P
   
   Here's the close-up detail of the strut tower bar attach point:
   pic

Post-Installation Notes:

I never got the chance to really test the strut tower bars on my car the way I would have liked before I sold it. Some engine problems (leaky intake pipe and bad MAF sensor), an airplane purchase (don't get too excited--it's basically a glorified ultralight, and only cost $200--yes, two hundred--more than I paid for my car), and a few other things that summer kept me from playing in my car the way I had intended and the next year, I traded the '92 for a '97 TSi. However, my impression from the time I did spend wringing out the car after installing the front strut tower bar is that it did noticeably improve handling. The rear bar, on the other hand was a different story. Again, I didn't get a chance to drive the car on an autocross track with and without the bars, nor did I really even get to measure my speed on a winding road with and without the bars, so take this evaluation for what it's worth (i.e., not much), but while I could feel a difference in responsiveness and "stickiness" after installing the front bars, I did not notice such a difference after installing the rear bar. In short, I would not recommend the rear bar unless you are tuning your car for autocross and you truly need to extract every ounce of performance from the car that you can.

However, the front strut tower bar made a huge difference in winter handling, believe it or not. My suspicion is that in winter, as one tire grabs the road surface, it tries to lift that side of the car (the front of the tire is rotating downwards, exerting an equal and opposite force to the frame of the car). However, the strut tower bar adds enough stiffness to the frame to keep the car from flexing upwards with the corresponding lack of traction. The result is that wheel hop is greatly reduced, and the car accellerated and cornered much better on partly icy roads than it did without the bar. But as in the summer, the rear bar did not seem to make any difference in the winter :(