Here's video from a track day we attended last weekend.

Our panhard bar lowering and leveling kit worked well on our 4th Gen and of course is just at home on the 3rd Gen...

 

What is the purpose of this kit ?

 

Holy tire deflection batman!

 

There are two main purposes. The first is a clearance thing to allow larger exhaust to pass over the PHB brace. We lower that brace then the PHB interferes. So we lower that as well...

The 2nd benefit is allowing us to tune rear roll center height for better handling potential. We run our car with "stock-ish" exhaust so the clearance isn't a thing for us. The fact that we can lower and level the PHB and keep the rear planted on auto-x and road race courses is a huge benefit.

ramey

 

Yup, and that's with a Rival S, the hottest 200TW auto-x and road race tire going (in the 200TW class, I realized there are other tires). We do a lot of punishing to make sure our products are Race Proven.

ramey

 

Just a quick note for all looking at this product:

3rd gens have two weaknesses from the factory in suspension geometry 1) being the roll axis is too much angled towards the front of the car which causes the notorious push-into-snap oversteer situation these cars all suffer from in OEM form...THis panhard relocation bracket is a tuning tool to adjust that out of the inherit flaw from the factory by dropping the rear roll center to bring the roll axis more level. THis is a very nice piece that fortunately replaces the discontinued Jegs piece- AND Umi took it one step further and made more adjustment points to the design then what Jegs had. THumbs up. This product should be on anyone and everyone's 3rd gen.

The 2nd important improvement to any 3rd gen is replacing the factory OEM strut mounts with solid bearing aftermarket mounts. Why? thesse mounts even when new have defection of the strut shaft (which is the steering angle support to the wheel when turning. The OEM mounts have large rubber bushing inside them that flex and thus take away responsiveness leaving performance on the table as the strut shaft momentarily will displace grip angle of the tire contact patch AND will absorb steering imput causing a slight delay in response.

There you have it.

Dean

 

Well if Dean says it's good then put me down for one when they are ready

 

If you have a stock rear axle, these should be available now. Those of us with non-stock units have some fitment testing to do before we can abuse it at the track.

 

Ok, I still do not get it. You say first of the 2 main purposes is exhaust clearance, but you are running stockish exhaust and do not need the clearance so let's just forget all about exhaust clearance. You go on to say that being able to lower and level the PHB keeps the rear planted. Dose lowering the PHB enhance handling ? At this point the PHB on my car is in the factory position and level, will lowering just the PHB make my car handle better ?

 

Yes it dose.

The factory position is not level. Got a pic?

It should be mentioned that any more than minimal adjustments, one may need to up the rear spring rates in conjunction with PHB lowering.

 

 

"Handle better" is a relative term. By lowering the panhard bar and changing the roll center height, we can influence handling. For the average street car it's not such a big deal but for auto-x and road race where we are cornering at 100% and want to achieve optimal balance, it's a good tuning tool.

In layman's terms, lowering the bar keeps the back end under the car. As TEDSGRD mentioned there are other factors as well (like spring rate optimization).

ramey

 

http://umiperformance.com/catalog/in...oducts_id=1049

When I'm able to get into autocross again, or I get overtime at work, I'll be putting my order in

 

Thanks for the positive feedback Dean! - Ryan