ITR rear trunk "strong" bar Install

Adapting this bar meant for the ITR to the DA chassis is fairly straight forward. I originally stumbled upon this bar when installing a Mugen rear strut tower bar on a friends ITR. Since they looked pretty much the same dimension wise, we pulled his trunk brace off, and fortunately, the studs that are used to hold the rear bumper support on the DA are already in almost exactly the right position to mount the ITR bar.

Test fitting the bar into my trunk, the only things that seemed to be hindering the install were the 2 child seat anchoring brackets. These might not be on every trim level, so check to be sure. They were on mine, so removing them was in order.

These are spot welded onto the interior of the trunk, so drilling out the spot welds or using an air hammer/chisel is your best bet. Be very careful, as you can punch right through the thin sheet metal of the trunk. I recommend being patient and gentle. I got in a bit of rush, and the results speak for themselves. In retrospect, I should have just cut off the the raised portion of the brackets with a cutting wheel, which would have allowed the bar to clear, but o well.

Hopefully, the brackets and space that they used to occupy should look something like this when you are done:

With those out of the way, all that is left is to modify the bar to make it fit. All that needs to be done is to elongate both mounting holes by about 1.5 mm each. This provides enough room to snug the bar on the bumper support mounting studs.

Now, remove the carpet and spare tire cover and you are ready to finally install the bar. Loosen each of the nuts on the bumper support studs and slide the bar in place. Get each one started, and then tighten them both down. The bar sits right on the area the jack mounts underneath, but don't be worried, it clears once it's all tightened up. With everything tight, and with the carpet back in place, things should look pretty much like this: