front Sway bar, rear sway bar or both?

Which racing beat sway bars to install?

  • Front alone

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Rear alone

    Votes: 10 55.6%

  • Both

    Votes: 8 44.4%
  • Total voters
    18
G

ghostbusters

Member
should either the front alone be installed, rear alone or both, i.e. to obtain the best balance in handling...opinions are welcome, thanks
 
Both, i feel its about balance

front sway bar creates understeer
Rear creates oversteer
 
it depends. are they adjustable?

with only a rear sway bar the car will oversteer during hard cornering.

i have the MSP front sway bar and the AWR rear and love it, car feels very neutral with a hint of oversteer near the edge
 
i have the racingbeat rear installed, non-adjustable, thinkin bout installing the front too, it handles very nicely, i just dont want any understeer, will installing the front induce understeer?
 
With the rear-only upgrade, the car will be really sweet for autocross. However, as my dearly departed 2002 DX can attest to, way too ass-happy at freeway speeds.
 
rustychops41 said:
With the rear-only upgrade, the car will be really sweet for autocross. However, as my dearly departed 2002 DX can attest to, way too ass-happy at freeway speeds.
Click to expand...

you're kidding right? The RB bar isn't really that stiff... sure, stiffer than the stock bar. On my car, it made it far more neutral (instead of an understeer mobile). You could rotate it if you wanted to, it never tried to bite me driving normally, or even in the few emergency lane changes I had to do with that setup.

Installing the big front bar also makes putting power down a chore. A lot of the guys that race these things tried the big front bar (from stock class all the way through street-mod) and all it did was make it impossible to put down power. And the ones that did go to the big front bar went back to the stock bar lol

I loved how mine handled with the RB Rear sway and stock front.
 
I would probably disagree that the RB bar isn't that stiff. I did the Tokico HP/RB springs conversion first, then added the RB rear bar over a month later. Before the RB rear bar swap, the car was very tolerable in terms of ride quality vs stock, and I was extremely happy with the trade-off. But when I added the rear RB bar the car instantly became very harsh in the rear, as if it makes the rear suspension a whole lot "less independent." It would hike up the inside rear going into driveways a good 6". Even small road imperfections felt much harsher, at least compared to the springs/struts only set-up. If the springs and struts made the car 15% firmer, the RB bar alone firmed it up at least by that amount again. I'm not saying I regretted the swap, it was truely sweet at the lower speeds for Solo II, and doing that front bar swap was out of the question for me, but a 75 MPH+ emergency lane change indeed is what sent the car to it's grave. Better tires may have helped too, as I was never happy with the Fuzion ZR1's since I had put them on. They weren't very sticky and seemed awfully narrow for a 205/45-16. I couldn't imagine road racing the car (like NASA et al) with that set-up. Perhaps a more skilled driver, with more high speed experience could have "caught" the extreme whip-sawing that occured, perhaps not. The second "wag" of the tail sent me spinning off into the median barrier dead-nuts sideways. My forte was autocross. Just be careful with the differences in car set-up at different car speeds.
 
Last edited:
hmm, i like the discussion, good points on both sides, havent really driven it hard yet, and i've recently developed the infamous 'clunk' problem, ...thanks for all the assists so far, keep em coming...
 
Rear RB - But the clunk is a killjoy. The stiffening in the back is simply sweeeeet and possibly comparable to the fixed trajectory swing of a centrifuge at the right speed. But I can see the potential for a bad swing out if your tyres arent sticky enough.
 
yeah, so seein as we installed new end links, and the clunking persists...what now?, i always assumed that the noise was caused by the bar rubbing on the bushings...which would require re-greasing?, what does induce the clunk?
 
Install both of the sway bars, that way you will get a more balanced feel with your car under hard cornering!
I did both and I don't regret the investment of time or money at all!!
 
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