Strut repairs, how thick a doubling plate to use

[Canadian dave 4]

Abit of a story with some pictures. w come a simple changing of the master cylinder has snow balled into a front end rebuild!?

Decided to give up on the brake box that I built in my early 20s . It just never worked as I had hoped due to me doing no math about pivot points or how much pedal effort would be required. So I have decided to put it back to a servo assist system.

 

To get it in I had to removed the strut brace and remove two engine mounts. At this point my worst fears where realised, I had hit the mother of all pot holes two years ago and it kinda looked like it had domed the strut top. That was confirmed today, it is cracked and domed.

I'm very confident I can repair it (beat it back to flat, weld up and then grind flat the cracks) my question is how thick a doubling plate for the strut top shud i make? Its mostly a fast road car, with the occasional hill climb and track day. How thick are guys using? I have some 3mm in the shop, thick enough? I'm probably going to weld a piece to the doubling plate to attach a removable strut brace to. Maybe a piece of pipe which a bolt can go through and attach a bar to, to link the two sides. Or I may just out the old sparco one back on (although I suspect it doesnt do much other than look nice)

[Tom Fenton 1,526]

3mm would be fine

 

I know the usual strut braces don’t look like they do much, but drive the car back to back with and without and I think you will be surprised at the difference. Certainly some years ago fitted one to one of my 205’s and the difference was massive.

[Thijs_Rallye 86 4 Cars]

We've used 5mm thick plates on our trackday car and welded them to the inside of the strut top.