Nikon1

Having looked at another shock tower brace, from a well known and respected after-market company, and their allen bolts were on the top of the brace I was left to wonder if ECS did it to possibly prevent a lawsuit? No ideas if this is the reason but it might explain the decision. The ECS, on-sale, was about 1/3 the price of the other brand.

heymoe

Based on their install PDF it makes it sound like they put the bolts on the bottom (hidden hardware) to maintain a clean, aesthetically pleasing look.

A5Newbie

So I guess they went for form over function, for something that is primarily function related that most people will only look at a couple of times a year. Makes perfect sense!!

heymoe

Yeah, there seems to be a lot of after market parts that live under the hood that use seem do more form then I think they should really be doing. For example, all the carbon fiber intakes and covers. I get it if you're doing car shows or something but I would rather have an injected plastic form intake saving the cost of using carbon fiber.

Nikon1

NJS5

ArvX147

It's pretty funny because on a lot of platforms the molded plastic intake still costs the same as the CF one. Its a lot cheaper to make a functional wet-layup CF mold than a working plastic injection mold Even cheaper still to mandrel bend an alu tube and slap a cone filter w/ formed sheet metal heat shield on the end.

As far as the bolt location of this part, its probably why it's on sale - ECS probably changed the design.

Since when is an exposed hex-cap bolt detrimental to the look of an engine bay?

Nikon1

NJS5

Nikon1