As you can see in my picture, once front end was all cleaned up, I had two cracks in the shock tower on the upper left of the picture above where the reinforcement plate was welded in. This 67 Cougar XR7 was completely stripped to bare metal and then these plates were welded in. It has been 7 years since these plates were added and no issues since. It is a great peace of mind to have these strengthening plates in place. I am not a welder, so I had a welder do the work and you cannot tell they were added. I highly recommend these reinforcement plates if you are doing any front end work at all. I also have the export brace in place.