Sway Bar Settings - Front And Rear

[evil_weevil]

Hey guys,

What sort of combo would you guys go for?

I have the sk group buy bars (front and rear), plus the group buy springs and shocks and front castor.

What are some option for the settings?

Car does 10-12 track/motokharna days a year and likes twisty roads!

So, currently I have front on medium and rear on hard

Today at a day at OP on the pan, tail came out, and was holding 2nd gear slides fairly well.

was understeering still abit (tyres could be that one.. )

But what would happen say if both bars were on medium?

OR I put front to hard and leave rear on hard?

Wat are some scenarios to look at and discuss?

Cheers,

Chris

(ps soon I'll be looking at front and rear camber kits and rear align kit also from the group buy)

[Simon-S14]

ok i have the SK combo also. With 8kg/mm front and 6kg/mm rears in my r32 and the fronts are on medium and rears on hard. I find that theres quite a lot of understeer... esp in the mid corner grip. Now i know my spring rate is quite stiff for the front bar, But softening the sway bar doesnt do anything, in fact the sway bar link is on an excessive angle when on the soft setting which makes the system work even worse.

But yeah, I use my car for drift comps, with good tyres all round and on higher speed 3rd and 4th gear corners it handles great... but on slower speed it just understeers.

I plan on either changing the front bar to a smaller one or lowering my spring rates all round.

[evil_weevil]

so Simon, if you were to put the front sway bar onto hard - what would happen in theory?

[BHDave]

If he hardens the front bar he'll get more under.

Same in your case chris, if you tighten the front you will get more understeer aswell, so i'd soften the front. I found that i could get good higher speed slides (top of second) on the ec skid pan a while back even though my car was an understeery pig in the dry. It was useless at the slower stuff but that could have been the driver

simon, I found that the whiteline base swaybars didn't have enough adjustment to get neutral handling, so i had to upgrade the rear to a 24mm (32gtst)

[Simon-S14]

tis what i have, the 27mm front and the 24mm rear adjustables.

i cant put the front on the softest setting due to the sway bar link being so fat bent out of wack that it really affects the handling... seems whiteline and SK dont believe that this is a problem tho....

[BHDave]

ah, i have 24 front and rear with similar spring rates to you, possibly a bit higher knowing cuscos spring preferences. I really think the 27 would just make my car an understeering pig again due to lack of adjustment. Front set on hard, rear on soft (which is probably medium on a 3 hole bar)

I have the newer 2 hole adjustable type ones that whiteline offer these days that seem to keep the factory front link at a reasonable angle simply by reducing the range of adjustability. I think that with the 3 hole type ones on the front you really need the front link that used to be part of the kit when they still had the old blue selbys bars. Though obviously you make more money by selling at the same price with less stuff in the kit, and even more when the buyer has to buy another bar entirely to get the cars handling balanced.

Edited March 24, 2007 by BHDave

[evil_weevil]

So putting front sway bar to soft setting would see my car...?

[Cubes]

Good thread.

I still run stock springs as I prefer my car to sit at stock height and just about to purchase a set of swaybars to keep the roll under control.

At the moment the car feels super neutral, it never understeers with a slight tendance to oversteer which is how I prefer.

Its running just over 6degree's caster which has made a massive improvement to front end grip/turnin.

The front sits fairly flat but the rear I can feel does roll around a tad more.

I think bhdave maybe on the money so I'm going to go with a similiar setup to his. 24mm front and rear.

bhdave.. Do you think i'm on the money thinking your on the money with what I should do for mysetup?

[BHDave]

So putting front sway bar to soft setting would see my car...?

understeer less. bit more front body roll, bit more front end grip. It should bring it back closer to neutral.

I'm basing this on the assumption that your car generally tends to understeer on corner entry and mid corner but the over steer you mentioned has more to do with throttle application while turning (power oversteer).

I think bhdave maybe on the money so I'm going to go with a similiar setup to his. 24mm front and rear.

bhdave.. Do you think i'm on the money thinking your on the money with what I should do for mysetup?

It's your money..... I think i'm tops, do you?

I initially thought mine didn't like the 22 mm rear bar due to the super streets i had running a 4/5 spring rate (though if anything that should mean i could use a softer rear). It turns out that even with the silly hard cusco's it likes the same settings. On slow corners it will put the arse out on turn in if you are aggressive on the steering wheel (It did this even with the clapped out viscous) but on medium and fast corners it is happy just to stick with maybe a hint of over on exit if you nail the throttle too hard. It's a pretty good set up i think.

[evil_weevil]

BHDave,

Thanks mate - I think I'll do an L2S practive day on this current set up - see how it goes and then "tinker" with it and maybe reduce the front sway bar and go again!

Thanks again for the replies

Cheers,

Chris

[nuffsaid]

With my super streets, 5k front and 4k rear, whiteline recommended to not go for the 22mm bar but the 20mm adjustable bar just in case set to full soft as the fairly high rear spring rate would mean the rear would be dangerous.

[BHDave]

Without knowing whitelines spring rates, that surprises me. 4kg/mm is only about 220lb/in which i doubt is much higher than what whiteline would run in their spring/shock combo.

On the same line of thinking you'd ideally need to reduce the size of both the front and rear bars in order to maintain a balance, otherwise you'll find that the car will just want to understeer with the big front bar and small rear, no matter how much you adjust it.

[nuffsaid]

Thats what the tech dude at Whiteline said, SK also agreed. I do get more understeer, and hardly over any over, might be worthiwhile increasing the rear bar setting, will that upset the rear though?

[Simon-S14]

it wont upset the rear as such but it will stiffen it up and increase the oversteer.

the amount of throttle you use into a corner has a lot to do with the car handles it also.

Knock it up a notch and see how it goes

[THENIG]

it wont upset the rear as such but it will stiffen it up and increase the oversteer.

the amount of throttle you use into a corner has a lot to do with the car handles it also.

Knock it up a notch and see how it goes

Simon did you have to change the D-shackle things that fasten the bushings at the front? I'm going to attempt to swap a 25mm swaybar for the standard one this weekend, i have 25mm and 27mm bushings but havn't looked under the car yet to see if the outside diameter will fit in the standard D-shackles, if anybody else has done the swap i would love to know what came with it, i bought the bar with the links secondhand.

Cheers

[Simon-S14]

Hey mate

nah the bushes dont fit the D shackels at all... i was in a rush and i just modded the bushes to fit the shackels... took forever to bolt up tho. Had no drama;s with the rears tho!

[Duncan]

the whiteline swaybars i got fitted the stock u brackets

[nisskid]

i run the adj. 24/22 combo, i found even with rear on hard and front on medium the car still understeered a fair bit, saying that i have a few wheel alignment issues with the front which might be contributing to the understeering. i currently run the front on soft and the rear on hard and it feels a lot better, pretty oversteery, but i find it better than understeery.

[nisskid]

the whiteline swaybars i got fitted the stock u brackets

what size were urs?

im thinking its probably because theirs are 27mm as my 24mm bars just fit into the U brackets, even if it meant using a jack to press the u bracket over the bush and into place. was very tight and the bushes were bulging out the side but it eventually went together.

[evil_weevil]

bit of an update....

I did a day at OP last week, was using semi's for first time on track also.

However, after pushing car for a while, it started to understeer so Im thinking the tyres got a bit "too" hot.

After a cool down and back out there, car was great again (and adjusting tyre pressures)

kept on pushing and car did not want to go into oversteer.

I did feel though my diff by the end of the day wanted to open wheel.

I was pretty happy with the way the car handled, even though I was still learning on the day I felt the car handled great with the syd kid suspension package.