sway bar?

OB · Post by OB » Sun Aug 26, 2007 12:28 am

invujerry wrote:And if you bend it, just park the other way for a few hours.

evilneon02 · Post by **evilneon02** » Sun Aug 26, 2007 4:03 pm

OB wrote:Here's an old one of mine 3 wheelin

OB what size sway bars you runnin

Wenuden · Post by **Wenuden** » Mon Sep 17, 2007 6:37 pm

Thread Jack: This looked like a decent place to pose my question. like the OP, i'm plannin on coilovers (real ones, BC inverted, not fake BS sleeves) in the next month or 2, and wanna get a set of sway bars too. Modern has a set of eibach 24 front/22 rear with brackets for non-rear equiped '00-'05 for $290. What i'm wondering is how these are going to affect the steering of a stock suspension car until i actually decide to drop over a grand on coilovers? My plans for the car are to be able to take a clover-leaf at 80+ with no body roll lol. I can deal with oversteer under acceleration, but i absolutely hate understeer. feedback?

Arro · Post by **Arro** » Mon Sep 17, 2007 9:35 pm

Jeff (jphillips on here) explained it to me best, so maybe he can shed some light on it... Jeff?

jphillips · Post by **jphillips** » Tue Sep 18, 2007 12:43 am

personally, I'm running without a rear sway because I mainly drive on the street and running too hot or into an unexpected closing radius corner lets me scrub speed without any drama due to the understeer... Granted I'm WOT well before the apex to pull the car around the corner, but the car is alot more nuetral than a 1gn or 2gn with a rear sway off throttle. I'm also on stockish 185/60/15 stockers and going to a wider tire will definitely change the balance of things. Jason's car on 205/50/16's and a rear sway (stock r/t?) definitely breaks the rear away waaaaaaaaaaaay sooner than mine does and at a much lower corner speed and loading.

If you're looking to blast on/offramps, then seriously consider a higher springrate before changing the sways. The stiffer springs resist roll on a car this light alot more than you think ( I say light as a relative term - I'm used to tuning suspensions on 4k lb track cars).

Play with the spring values to get a balance that you want between over and understeer before adding different sways into the mix. As stated before, the sways act as a 3rd spring with regards to lateral roll loading and the ratios between the front and rear corner weights will determine the chasis' tendency to over or understear at a steady state loading.

Ask yourself what you are trying to accomplish; Zero bodyroll isn't always a good thing and there's definitely such a thing as being oversprung, especially on a street car. Do you like the balance of the handeling now? If there's too much understeer, start with a grippier set of tires. If there's still too much understeer, then raise the spring rate in the rear to the next higher available. Then fine tune with sways. Running too big of a sway in the rear will give you oversteer, but the breakaway tends to be alot more abrupt...it would suck to be blasting a cloverleaf at 80 and have the feeling go from "HELL MOFO-ING YEAH!" to "HOLY SH*T!" because of a sudden snap to oversteer; it's alot tougher to recover from in an FWD as well since the tires are already at the limit from the corner loads and trying to recover with throttle probably wont do as much as you'd hope.

regards to ride height (edit -meant to say sways) affecting streetability; it would have to be a MASSIVE bump under one wheel to really even notice the diff 'tween sways and no sways - and if it was *that* big, you'd have bigger problems than the sways affecting ride quality. By far and away the best suspension mod you can do is a coilover setup, but it's also the most work to reap the biggest benefit. You'll have to educate yourself on exactly how springrates and damping values affect the way the chassis reacts - very very rewarding though. I'm pretty confident it'll keep you busy for a long while playing with ride height, preload, bound and rebound settings before you even start to worry about sways.

From another angle, if you look at what the factory engineers were trying to accomplish with particularly the gen2 suspension, you'll see that the springs rates got even lower than the gen1 even though vehicle weight went up a tad. Why? Softer springs ride nicer for us cushy US market types and the sways make the springs a higher rate during cornering giving a compromise between freeway ride and corner sportyness.

Will you eventually want sways? If you're going to track the car or attack the twisties with a vengence absolutely, and they'll let you do the same thing as the stock setup; allow you to dial back some of the preload or goto a softer spring giving more bump compliance but a higher springrate in the lateral.

Has anyone over done a corner weight on a gen2? It'd be interesting to see what the actual weight distribution is... I'm guessing it's in the high 60's - like 65/35 or therabouts. I could probably work it out from the stock spring rates, but I'm too many beers into the night to break out the maths.

OB · Post by OB » Tue Sep 18, 2007 1:05 am

^Well written, good information.

Simply put, sway bars are only as good as the rest of your suspension setup. On a stock setup, some mild bars will improve handling a bit and help reduce roll around corners. Just adding a rear bar helped mine out quite a bit, and its the smallest bar available (17mm). I look forward to upgrading down the road, but I dont plan on seeing huge improvements until I switch for a coilover setup and upgraded bushings to compliment larger bars. The order in which you do things will also have an effect on how it changes the car's ride and handling characteristics. Mild sways and springs are a great start. Some decent dampers to accompany those springs are also crucial in keeping the balance. The Neon is an excellent car in the turns, even in stock trim. Making a few small mods to the suspension is really all that's needed to put the hurt on the twisties

Then, later on down the road, a race suspension will make that much of a difference, once you've conquered the basics and learned to appreciate just how far this car will go with a decent driver.

Wenuden · Post by **Wenuden** » Tue Sep 18, 2007 6:19 pm

Damn, Jp, that's a whole lot of info. how about I just get the coilovers and sways, and bring the car out to you to tune, since it looks like you know wtf you're talking about lol. seriously though, I'm not really interested in buying multiple sets of springs and sways, altho that looks like what i should do to get the car where i want it. i was thinking the BC inverted coilovers with the spring rate one higher than what they come with. a friend has an srt with that setup and it rides really nice, but of course that's a lot more powerful car, so i really don't know what that'd be like on my stock motor, or if power would even make a difference. from what i'm understanding of what you said tho, just throwing the oversized sways on is going to be detrimental until i get the coilovers and get them tuned to where they should be for what i want? thanks for all the help, and if you have any suggestions of any books or literature i can read up on about suspension tuning, any help is appreciated.

jphillips · Post by **jphillips** » Thu Sep 20, 2007 2:29 am

how about I just get the coilovers and sways, and bring the car out to you to tune

I'm weird, I get off on suspension tuning like some get off on dyno tuning...

but of course that's a lot more powerful car, so i really don't know what that'd be like on my stock motor,

Same chassis, the only difference is he'd come outta the hole a whole lot harder 'cos of the HP difference, but lateral peaks would be identical.

just throwing the oversized sways on is going to be detrimental

even with a full pillowball'd endlink setup with coilovers, it'd be detrimental... sways are just another spring, but they only work in the lateral.

if you have any suggestions of any books or literature i can read up on about suspension tuning, any help is appreciated.

got shelves of engineering maths. aerodynamics/fluid dynamics and thermodynamics books--where would you like to start?

Arro · Post by **Arro** » Thu Sep 20, 2007 11:45 am

jeff is a suspension NERD, but it's what makes him c00l lol

jphillips · Post by **jphillips** » Thu Sep 20, 2007 7:28 pm

I should probably just bite the bullet and do a full suspension analysis on my car to put in a sticky post...

I'm just not sure how many people would be interested in what the roll centers are set to and how much reactive chamber you get, etc.

Arro · Post by **Arro** » Thu Sep 20, 2007 9:19 pm

As long as you provide a layperson translation, we'd all be interested (or at least I would).

Post by **racer12306** » Thu Sep 20, 2007 9:30 pm

same here, with a little bit of luck i will be able to upgrade my suspension soon.

evilneon02 · Post by **evilneon02** » Fri Sep 21, 2007 7:07 am

same here, im looking to upgrade soon and the info would help