Hi, I just wanted to introduce myself, I am Gary Hoffman and I own a small company called Hardbar that makes cool things for C4, c5 and C6's. I personally now own a C6Z, but I had a really nice handling '89 and won alot of trophys with it, so if there is anything I can help you with drop me a line!
Thanks!

Yea! I know Hardbar! Cool stuff!

Welcome aboard!!!

Welcome, welcome, welcome!

Welcome. So what else do you make?

Welcome aboard!

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Welcome,
this is a very good forum you've joined!

Welcome and tell us about the products.

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Welcome! I agree, tell us whatcha got.
A link to your site?

I think this might be it:

http://hardbarusa.com

I will have to figure out what the rules are on this forum. Some forums are VERY strict about who can post about things. My friend Brian Cunningham told me about this forum and said it is great. We are one of the Corvette shops that does not ignore the C4's, and we do stock harness bars for 84-90 and 90-96 (they are different) as well as seat rails, Delrin shift knobs, and coming soon, Penske shock (with or without coil-overs) packages specifically for C4's. There are also things that are not on the web site, so if there is anything you are interested in, please ask. We use only the best materials and methods (CNC billet shock mounts shown below for example) and strive to be the best. We are not just a vendor, we use what we sell. Here are a couple of pix of the new shock mounts (available in March) so you can use any correct length shock (besides Penske) that has Heim joints at both ends. Note the use on a shoulder bolt so that no threads are in shear and it has zero slop so it does not drive you nuts with rattles. This is for the front upper:


and upper rear mount:


The cool thing is that these are common (upper front and rear and lower front) for C4, C5, C6 and C6Z so that we can get the volume up and the cost down.
And, I just am into Corvettes, so if there is anything I can help with, just call or write! Thanks!

WELCOME

Gary make some cool stuff, good to have him here!

Good to have you on board.

welcome to the GURU

As an engineer, I can say that looks like some well thought out work. There are so many aftermarket products that were well conceived and poorly executed.

I'll check out the website. I might be turning my 85 into a track whore. I don't want to lose driveability though, at least not yet.

Gary you made it!

I've know Gary for years.

Had plenty of times at the track with him.

He's the one I'm getting the Penske coilover setup from.

BTW In case your wondering what a Hardbar is, here's a pic, complete with camera mount.
Been running it for years to mount my harness to, really stiffens up the car as well.

[web]http://i242.photobucket.com/albums/ff87/swiftwood/BayStateCorvetteClub/members/Brian%20Cunningham/C4install3.jpg[/web]

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Oh that is loosely used.

Good stuff Gary.

about this coilover mod. Does the products you make address the coil over debate for the lower rear mount?

*puts flame suit on*

Welcome!

Welcome along Gary

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Thanks everyone! The lower rear is .600 diameter and we can use a 15mm Heim that is .591. Obviously, there are 2 choices , either turn .005 off of the radius (about a 5 minute job on my 1962 LeBlond lathe. This is another story, this thing is huge, like 2500 pounds, and I bought it last year in like new condition with tons of accessories for $3k from a shop that replaced it with a CNC lathe!) or have the CNC shop above make new ones out of 17-4 PH SS. The question I have is: is this part still available from GM? The other mounts are common to C4, C5, C6 so it gives us some economy of scale.

I am not sure you have seen the raging debate.

The discussion goes along the lines that the lower mount for the rear shock is too weak to support a coil over.

I only read the details someone else (when they get a ounce of energy) will have to fill in the actual details.

Welcome aboard, very nice products, I looked.

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And also the upper front mount on early cars. GM supposedly increased the strength of this mount at some point. Which sort of implies it wasn't even strong enough with the shock on there. But they did increase the mechanical advantage of the front suspension in 88, so that may be related.

We are addressing both the upper front and lower rear debate.
The upper front mount distributes the load over a greater surface area so that the lilkelyhood of cracking is all but eliminated.
The lower rear is a different story. We have no idea what the OE stud is actually made of (alloy wise) but assuming it is a decent alloy steel piece, it is marginal for the loads encountered. Tom Urban measured the piece off of his '95 and I modeled it with COSMOS. The load in this model is 2200 lbs and that is just at the elastic limit (yleld). History indicates that it has not been a problem, as C4's have been running around with coil overs for years, and to do 2200 lbs, you basically have to have slam the one side of the car down at 1.5 g's. On the other hand, the other mounts, can take much more than this and argues for a new design for long term fatigue. Comments are welcome as well as sarcastic remarks!
Cheers,
Gary

Well that's good to find out.
Nice to have a real engineering working on this stuff!

Look like if you go into coil bind before hitting the bump stops with the current setup, the mount will fail.

Sound like time for a new mount.

Welcome aboard!!

Here is the first prototype upper mount. It is not threaded on the stud, but it fits really well on my C6Z. Now I need to go over to Tom's house and fit check it on his '95. Compare it to the Solidworks model shown. Amazing how they look the same!

Welcome aboard... very interesting products.

Welcome

I've seen your stuff advertised elsewhere and was pretty impressed

Welcome Gary, I've seen your stuff in person on my buddies car.