If you google sway bars that seems correct. Everyone here though would disagree. More front, less rear.

Yeah "the more bar up front causes understeer" is only true once you have too much bar. This happens because it causes load from the inside tire to push onto the loaded outside tire. However until you reach that threshold, more bar up front is generally a good thing.

There are other ways to fix understeer, is what it comes down to. Primary purpose of the sway bar is to reduce body roll, however a side effect of a antisway bar is that it causes some load to be transferred to the outside tire-which ends up causing "push". Push in the front is understeer, push in the rear is oversteer.

Body roll itself does not cause that much understeer mathematically. But it is scary as hell and destabilizes everything when you are going through the esses for example. So the more correct way of looking at it is that a anti sway bar is there to prevent body roll, however when you use one, it is going to affect the way the car handles in terms of under/oversteer. If you did have "too much front bar" yes the front would "push" around the corner.

However I think a better way to solve it would be stiffer front springs, damper settings, and tuning the rear sway correctly which are all valid ways to get the car to rotate. All of those would be better than "not enough front bar to reduce body roll to an acceptable level".


That's my interpretation of it anyway.

I was in your camp until I saw how little a set of stiff springs did for the car, the sway bar is very important in controlling the sway on the car.

You are of course free to dismiss my opinion, my goal was only to aid the op in making an informed decision by offering my personal experience and knowledge. I have no desire to get into an argument. You may be completely correct. Hope everyone has a great day. :tiphat:

Interesting, I'd be in interested to know which rates you were going from and to on the F/R. Are you speaking of just reducing the feel of body roll or actually changing the balance of grip at the limit?

Edit: could this be cause by unfavorable dynamic camber angles being generated when the car is at maximum roll? The only other thing I could think of is chassis rigidity or bushing deflection being way...bad -which I don't think is the case. If so should that be corrected by a change in static camber or or running a different bar? Cause we can't just change physics, the end of the car with a more highly loaded outside tire is going to have less grip assuming ideal tire contact patch and tire temperature/size.

Points well made.

Yes the transient responses would definitely be crisper with a stiffer front bar and the car might take a set faster. Turn in would be more direct as well and front end feel would be improved but is it actually causing a gain of absolute grip at the front?

Tough question to answer. I mean theoretically no, tires are tires and that's it. The body roll itself is not that terrible of a dynamic when talking in terms of total grip. But the bouncy trouncy-ness in my opinion is a very bad dynamic that causes the driver to pause and correct things that don't need to be corrected based on "feel". The body wavering around is also going to cause some loss in grip due to load transfers and just driver uneasiness/unsettling the car.

At the same time a car that is "rolling" over meaning that it has rolled too far, and it is causing some type of camber or roll moment problem, is obviously not acceptable either and needs a sway to tame it. The OEM suspension on this car hits that point quite easily. I can tell you that I could roll this car's front suspension over by probably my 5th track day. Mainly through any type of mid speed esses. Stiffer springs aren't going to help that if the car "falls" off from body roll. There's a point where roll is acceptable vs. losing a little bit of overall theoretical grip in order to not have the car feeling like I'm on a raft.

I just managed to win a set of Stillen sways brand new for $145 from a dealership on Ebay. Now I just need some SPL endlinks and I'll be all set!

Don't expect much. They're weaker than the whitelines and I noticed nothing from the WL. You need more bar, a lot more!

I'm curious to know why people feel we need so much sway bar in our cars. When Randy Pobst drove the 2010 nismo for Motor Trend he said it was the car he could drive at the limit more so than any other car in the test.

Butt dyno is way different than an actual dyno. Or in this case lap times. He may drive at the limit but raising the limit lowers your lap times.

It just makes it easier to drive, not everyone is a professional driver.

Nolimit,
What kind of lap time increases have you seen with your mods?

last time i checked, my name was not this randy fellow.

I've been building the car up since I bought it 6 months ago, and now its winter. No lap times on this particular car.