This is why shock tower reinforcement plates are a must
I took my strut bar off to start my shock swap and discovered severe deformation of the shock tower and a crack in the left side.
I never installed reinforcement plates because I thought the design of my strut brace would keep the tower from mushrooming. Major fail on my part..
Sure, it kept the bolts strait but did nothing to combat the upwards force of the shock mount on the tower. In fact, it may have actually exacerbated the problem by sandwiching the metal between the shock mount and the brace mount.
I'm pretty sure that the ground lip that I hit on the 42 freeway while they were resurfacing is what deformed the top of the towers as it bent all 4 of my wheels. The crack is metal fatigue.
In this picture you can see the shape of the shock mount imprinted in the tower.
The top should be as smooth as this reinforcement plate.
The crack is in a bad spot as it goes through two holes
This is what my strut brace mount looks like
It shouldn't be too difficult to fix. Just time consuming and something I wasn't expecting to have todo.
Process will be to get the towers back to their original shape, drill out the ends of the cracks MIG weld cracks, dress the mount holes, grinding welds flat and respray the area.
One the reinforcement plates are installed I shouldn't have to worry about it again.
I'd recommend adding the reinforcement plates to any car not just cars with modified suspension. $20 for the plates = cheap insurance
Dinan CAI &Throttle body, ESS Tuning TS2, Bimmerbrakes gen3 headers, UUC SSK & DSSR. Achilles oil pump, VAC oil pan baffle
M3 Motor mounts, UUC Trans mounts, Modified clutch style LSD 3.15, TMS front subframe reinforcement, Koni Yellow sports,
H&R sport springs, UUC sway bars, BMW Perf. Rotors, UUC SS brake lines, Hawk HPS pads, CSL replica wheels,
Rotora strut bar, FXR HID conversion, M3 Mirror conversion, BSW stage 1 speakers