Tie Bars and Sway bars
One more thing just for the record. Having driven off road more than on road really helps your car control skills. Driving a 500hp rwd truck with a 2" rear sway bar and no bar up front in a 3500lb truck really lends new meaning to the term "sideways". Getting crossed up in a whoop section doing 90mph is also a good learning experience. Not trying to steal any thunder from the on-road racers (its a blast!), but try getting into off-road racing if money and time permits. You will show up to an autocross the next week and it will be a cakewalk.
CivicMexicano Is My Daddy
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so well im plannin to get front and rear sway bars.... what setup do u think is the best?
i also have generic ebay front and rear upper strut bars and a megan tie bar...
i also have generic ebay front and rear upper strut bars and a megan tie bar...
El Pinche Turbo Mexicano
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I was wondering why doesn't anyone change the front sway, i would think its cause it returns the balance of the car almost to stock (prone to understeer), but the car would sway a lot less, and theres a lot of other ways to induce a oversteer or get rid of understeer....
My car (EX Coupe), has a LX suspension since it a Mexico version, so i dont know how it would affect handling if i just bolted up the Compect bar i bought, the front is the 25.4mm so i was wondering if the Eibach kit would be good, since it has a 26mm front and a 20mm rear....
My car (EX Coupe), has a LX suspension since it a Mexico version, so i dont know how it would affect handling if i just bolted up the Compect bar i bought, the front is the 25.4mm so i was wondering if the Eibach kit would be good, since it has a 26mm front and a 20mm rear....
Autocross Junky
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I did change my front bar... It was a 25.4mm and now its a 15.9mm.
on a FWD platform, if your trying to get every last bit of performance out of the car, then there is absolutly no reason why you should increase the size/effectiveness of the front anti-roll bar. Decrease it maybe, but definitly not increase. The reason behind this is because of the way anti-roll bars work. Because anti-roll bars effectivly tie the two sided of the suspension together, when one compresses, the antiroll bar twists to increase the side that's compressings effective spring rate. It does this by pressing against the spring on the opposite side, causing it to start to compress too. Which lowers the amount of weight on the inside tires... and as we should all know by now, Weight = Traction. So, By increasing the effecteve ness of the anti-roll bar you are also increasaing the traction loss by the inside tire. Not really a big deal for cornering, BUT a very big deal when you press on the gas to start accelerating out of that corner. Thanks to our open differentials, power gets applied to the tire with the least ammount of traction... so, when you push on the gas, the inside wheel lights up and spins and you accelerate very slowly out of that corner. If you were to Down size or reduce the effectiveness of the front bar, the inside wheel would have more traction, giving you more grip for corner exit acceleration... and corner exit speeds/acceleration are key to putting down a good lap time.
on a FWD platform, if your trying to get every last bit of performance out of the car, then there is absolutly no reason why you should increase the size/effectiveness of the front anti-roll bar. Decrease it maybe, but definitly not increase. The reason behind this is because of the way anti-roll bars work. Because anti-roll bars effectivly tie the two sided of the suspension together, when one compresses, the antiroll bar twists to increase the side that's compressings effective spring rate. It does this by pressing against the spring on the opposite side, causing it to start to compress too. Which lowers the amount of weight on the inside tires... and as we should all know by now, Weight = Traction. So, By increasing the effecteve ness of the anti-roll bar you are also increasaing the traction loss by the inside tire. Not really a big deal for cornering, BUT a very big deal when you press on the gas to start accelerating out of that corner. Thanks to our open differentials, power gets applied to the tire with the least ammount of traction... so, when you push on the gas, the inside wheel lights up and spins and you accelerate very slowly out of that corner. If you were to Down size or reduce the effectiveness of the front bar, the inside wheel would have more traction, giving you more grip for corner exit acceleration... and corner exit speeds/acceleration are key to putting down a good lap time.
Autocross Junky
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Originally Posted by el_ben2
so well im plannin to get front and rear sway bars.... what setup do u think is the best?
i also have generic ebay front and rear upper strut bars and a megan tie bar...
i also have generic ebay front and rear upper strut bars and a megan tie bar...
This depends greatly on what you plan on doing with the car.
Autocross Junky
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Sway Bars tune up...is it really needed??
Ok...after almost 8 months of being installed, I finally got to greased up both the sway bar bushings and the endlinks. To my surprise, all 4 bushings were almost intact and with very small signs of wear. I was concerned since members here had mentioned to load the suspension otherwise I'd have no bushings soon, but everything looked fine after almost 8 months. Just in case, this time, I did load the suspension. I'm not really sure if the load is needed to mount the sway bars or if they also need grease periodically, but those endlinks which were super dry and were driving me nuts with all that noise...anyways, do the bars need this type of maintenace from time to time or it isn't needed?
kinda blurry, but the inside of the bushings was in great condition

Rear suspension loaded

kinda blurry, but the inside of the bushings was in great condition

Rear suspension loaded

Last edited by cubanmike26; May 14, 2005 at 07:40 PM.
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