First, let me begin by saying if you have an A1 Volkswagen Rabbit without any rust, consider yourself truly blessed. I've looked over a lot of these little cars and for all the German engineering that went into them, a lot of Italian paint philosophy seemed to follow. That is to say the metal body is used as a cathode for all the electrical grounds and as a result the car is pretty much guaranteed to rust.

The following pictures show how easy it is to install a strut tower brace in these little racers. If you drive aggressively at all - or if you drive on a freeway - you can definitely benefit from adding a brace. It stiffens the front of the car and cures a lot of the "little car" handling problems you may be experiencing. It doesn't cure all your troubles but it does drastically reduce the "twitchy" feel and the "bump-steer" that front-end flex can give you.

After searching the web long and hard for instructions on how to do this, I gave up the idea. I had a brace that I bought off Craigslist but it simply did not fit! Then a friend spotted an identical brace on a car he was perusing and realized that it was an A2 brace that I had. Another add on Craigslist and I secured the trade for an A1 brace!

To the mechanically inclined, this may seem obvious. To those of us just learning to work on cars, this is an important question!

On the A1 Volkswagen Rabbit (and many other cars), you access the strut towers by opening the hood. You can also get to them through the wheel wells but that's a lot dirtier and hard work. Some guys prefer to do both and add a longer or heavier bolt on the braces - and if you don't have the correct strut tower brace, you may just have to do this.

I prefer to have the right brace the first time, then I don't have to modify the car or use any fancy tools. Fortunately for VW owners, the A1's are still popular and very simple cars to tune so they are well supported. In this case, the Neuspeed A1 brace is a direct fit using existing strut tower bolts. It doesn't get any better than this!

Now that you know where your strut towers are, acquire a brace! If like me you believe that the best parts are used parts, you may have a very affordable brace (I paid $20) but you'd best be sure that it is a brace that will actually fit your car!

The first brace I bought as an A1 and quickly learned that it wasn't. Dry fit your brace first. Lay it across the towers and make sure that it lines up with the bolts and mounting points that it's designed to. If your bolts are more than 1/2" off, you'd better look like the Hulk to bend it into position - or better yet go find another brace that is the correct fit or isn't bent.

Now that you know your brace is correct and will likely fit, remove the nuts, lockwashers, and washers from the strut tower bolts where the brace will mount. If your life is entirely charmed, the brace will simply slip over these exposed bolts and you can reinstall the washer, a new lockwasher, and the undamaged nuts!

If your life is normal, you're going to have to put on some gloves, warm up your muscles, do your stretching exercises, and get ready for a workout. These braces are made to keep thousands of pounds of force from moving your strut towers - and since it is likely you need one because your towers are already moving relative to each other, your going to have to find a way to get everything to line up all at once...

After several attempts, I finally realized that you MUST install one side first. Put the nuts on over the brace temporarily so that it will not pop off when you give it the force. Then moving over to the other side of the car, you're probably going to have to bend the brace (this is like 1" steel rod) by holding it in the center with one hand and forcing the other end to meet the bolts waiting for it there. Now I'm a pretty big guy (6'1", 250lbs) and I have been body building off and on for almost 20 years and this was....strenuous. If you're doing it alone, wear gloves because you will wear the skin off your hands or bust your knuckles on that rusty old strut tower. Ideally you invite a friend over for some beer and con him into helping you warp the brace into place...

Either way, it can be done! Once in place, reinstall the washers, new lockwashers, and nuts (maybe even new nuts). The brace is going to make the nuts ride much higher than before the install. Torque it all down per your Bentley Manual specs and take it for a test drive!

The brace makes the car noticeably stiffer. Right away I noticed that a lot of clunks, rattles, vibrations, and squeaks that I was living with simply disappeared. There are still weird noises to be sure, but its noticeably quieter. I also noticed that when corning hard, the grinding/creaking noise of the front end has also disappeared and the car turns much more assuredly. I also notice that it doesn't grab the pavement grooves anymore and the "twitchy" steering feel has gone away. In fact, its almost hard to get the car to swerve now whereas before it was a challenge to keep it going in a straight line.

On another note, while tallying up how much I've put into this car, I ran across the previous owners receipts. I found that in addition to a fender bender he had, he also put on a new exhaust system, new struts, new brakes, and a new engine. No wonder the car runs so strong! He had a quote to get it painted but its higher than the value of the car. Thats okay, I guess. There are a couple more years of life left in the rusty little body...