Sway Bars vs Strut Brace

Ok...it's been awhile since i have posted, but i did search and did not find a hit. Can someone educate me on the differences between swaybars and strut braces? From other threads...consensus is that strut braces are useless for caymans and sway bars are good for stiffness, right?

Although the chassis gurus will have way better definitions than me... Strut braces are stiff bars to connect the tops of the suspension towers in an effort to add additional 'stiffness' to the chassis structure. The Cayman 's very stiff chassis apparently needs little additional stiffening. Sway bars act on the suspension and basically prevent the wheels on one side of the car from moving up and down much more than the other side. It basically makes the body roll less, and affects handling in that manner as well.

What he said To add a little, a larger rear sway bar should induce more oversteer (provided the front bar stays the same). A smaller one, more understeer. I can't see any reason for a strut bar on this car.

Yeah, I agree with Swancoat. A strut tower brace is really a fix to prevent to tops of the strut towers from flexing which has a bad effect on handling. Because the Cayman really started life as a roadster (the Boxster ) and then went hard top, it's shell is very rigid. If you drove two identical cars back to back, one with a strut tower brace, the other without, I would bet $100 you couldn't tell a difference. A different sway bar on the other hand can make a very noticeable difference. A sway bar is essentially a torsional spring that applies pressure only when the chassis is experiencing body roll. Hey Swancoat, I love that signature.....

no need for strut bar. the front of cayman is pretty much the same as cup cars (factory race cars). cup cars dont use strut bar and most likely you will never drive your car as hard as cup cars. so it be safe to assume that you will never reap benefits, if any, from strut bar

I realize that this is resurrecting this thread from the dead. If anyone wants to actually see if a strut bar will do much, a method we used to use was to measure the distance exactly between the tops of the two front strut towers. Then jack up one side of the car. Then measure the distance between the strut towers again. If the body is extremely stiff then the distance should be the same or maybe out by a couple mm. If its out by more, then a strut brace would have induced additional stiffness. Obviously the stress of jacking up the whole car on one side is pretty big, but I have compared different cars like this and some cars are HUGELY flexible and you can see the difference in cm and others are only off by a few mm. Of course with a strut brace the difference is 0, I have never seen it be 0 on any car without a brace yet!