D-Menace

Any members here with the ractive adjustable strut bar?...anyways, i have cruise control, and i wasn't able to mount it back on the strut tower due to the bracket of the strut...rite now my cruise control isn't attached but is on top of the tower...anybody with similar experiences?...or somebody did one better and figure out a solution?...any ideas would be cool...

eltonr

what's the exact model (Ractive model) where did you buy it??? did you mount the cc unit on top of the strut tower bar ?

gujustud

I've got some pics of what I did... this Ractive Strut is installed in a '99 Protege...

more pictures here

eltonr

i was talking to this guy at a mazda dealership in toronto and he told me that the new ractive strut tower bars do not require any modifcations to fit the cc unit......he said that the reason they cc unit wouldn't fit on top of the "old" ractive bars was becase the bar was round at the top......but supposedly the new ones are flat at the top and allow you to mount the cc unit on top of this.......any one know if this is true????....

Toru

I was talking to a guy at Toucan's (Toucan Industries being the maker of Ractive) Toronto office and learned that the bar is designed to fit overtop the passenger side factory strut bar mounting plate, which obviously the sedan does not have (unless it's an MP3). The bar was designed to replace the P5 factory bar, not to be installed on a sedan that never had a factory bar.

Sedan owners need to order the passenger side factory strut bar mounting plate for cruise control from a Mazda dealer. This is going to cost me $33 CDN. That's fairly expensive considering the Ractive bar is only $50 CDN, but still less than the $400 CDN the dealer wants for the whole factory strut bar, and still less than the ~$250 CDN it would cost to get the $99 USD factory bar from the USA (not to mention the HUGE PITA ordering stuff from the USA is. )

I suggested to the tech guy there that they may want to consider offering their own CC mounting plate for sedans - assuming they can bring a bracket to market that is cheaper than $33 CDN.

Also, the guy was talking about their Fireball exhaust systems and their upcoming brake rotor offerings for Proteges. All this new stuff is supposed to be in their 2003 catalog (available mid-November, after SEMA).

Seems like Toucan is really expanding their offerings for Proteges.

BTW, I asked him about the flat top Vs. rounded (or rolled) top issue and he claimed that there is only one bracket, but they are coming out with an aluminum billet brace for the Protege as well, maybe that is what the dealership guy was thinking of?

gujustud

Its NOT true.

It is ONLY made for the Protege5. Look at my pics, impossible for it to fit on my CC bracket.

gujustud

We've (Vancouver protege Club) had a lot of P5 owners change from the stock bar, to the Ractive, simply because we find it much stronger, and find the OEM more cheapy built...

And isin't the point of the strut bar, to tie together the strut mounts?

(correct me if i'm wrong, just looking for answers)