Hey everyone, I've been looking at my swaybar options and it appears there is anything from 30 to 36mm front and 20-26mm back.

Has anyone looked into what front/back combo gives the best cornering performance (with the weight of 350 block)? I've read someplace that by selecting the right sizes, you can eliminate most under-/overstreer.

Also I looked at Spohn and they have a kit ~$270 and TDS sells front/rear separately for a total ~$130, and the latter ones are beefier than Spohn. Anyone know what's up with the price difference? Even with bushing kits, TDS doesn't come close to Spohn.

 

well the price different is this.

tds sells the gm sway bars and powder coats them.

spohn makes his from chrome moly then coats them.



I dont do much cornering but the factory ws6 bars from firebirds 36mm 24 mm seem to be a nice choice and are rather cheap to find.

 

I found a guy parting out a 1LE car locally (from these boards) and picked up the popular hollow 36mm front and solid 24mm rear for $50.

VERY noticable difference on my car. Has mild understeer, but with my driving habits that's a good thing. Highly recommended.

 

I just bought a lot of suspension parts from Spohn and the swaybar kit was one of them. As said, it's a solid cro-moly piece that's formed differently than stock and other aftermarket bars. I can give you seat-of-the-pants feedback once my install is done if you like.

 

Has anybody had driving impressiosn between the Spohn set and the WS6 set? I've been thinking about getting the Spohn sway bars on round two of suspension upgrades-- I already have the 36mm front hollow and 24mm rear bar from the factory, measured them a weekend ago. Thoughts?

 

Half-FastRacing, I would definitely like to hear your impressions. What other suspension pieces you buy from Spohn?

Sorry, guys I am not familiar with the metal, but how is chrome moly different from the metal GM uses? I am making a rather lengthy list of things, so I want to make sure if I pay extra for something, that something will be worth it.

Is 32mm spohn swaybar stiffer than GM 36mm? lasts longer? Besides stiffness and durability, are there any other factors? weight?

 

I weighed the stock IROC bar versus the Spohn bar. I will post the numbers tomorrow for you.

I don't know the property differences between steel and cromoly. I have noticed that it takes less cromoly material to support the same load as steel. So maybe it's not that cromoly is lighter inch to inch, but that less is needed. I'm not sure.

I have to believe the stock hollow sway bar will flex more than solid Spohn bar. Unfortunately I'm replacing all the suspension parts at the same time. I won't be able to single out the effect of the Spohn sway bar. If I am really bored one day, I can switch between the stock and Spohn bars to see if I feel a difference.

I bought Spohn's LCAs, LCA relocation brackets, sway bar kit, panhard bar, torque arm, strut tower mounts, eibach sportlines, koni yellows, and wonderbar. That and GS-D3s should make for some fun road racing.

Adam

 

I saw a post lately saying that the Spohn bars, 32/21 or whatever, have higher rates than the stock 36/24 setup.

Bar selection depends on stuff like springs and so on - softer springs are usually used with thicker bars. Higher spring rates usually work best with thinner bars. The bars also have to be properly matched but that could mean that 32/19 or whatever might be optimum for a particular car and driver etc.

Right now I have 32/21 stock bars, poly bushings, prokit and Koni Yellows as well as SFCs and all that schit - the car corners real good on a race track with that setup and 275/40/17s on all four corners.

 

George -

I'm two days away from totally redoing the front and rear suspension and about two weeks away from testing it all on a 1.8 mile road course. I can't wait to see the difference. I also went from no-name 245/50 R16s to Goodyear GS-D3s in the same size. Should prove to be a great time. And of course, pics will follow. - Adam

 

Yeah - running the car on a track is a blast - have a good time with it.

Here's a shot of the local road course. It's about 2 miles and has elevation changes which is nice.

 

George - I'm extremely jealous. The track by me (40 miles away) is a short course and extremely flat. I don't mean to complain, but your local track looks like a blast. We have one turn after a semi-straight that bring you into a 90 degree right hander in excess of 90 mph. Slightly different than street driving

What's your favorite turn or section on your home track?

 

That's the Driver Development Track at Mosport. It's about an hour from where I live. They have Solo 1 events there and the various car clubs hold lap days. Usually it's $100 or so for the day and most of the clubs are happy to have non-members attend just to get the revenues up a bit. There are a couple of other tracks nearby but this one is the best IMO. In the centre of the picture there's a black dot which is the roof of a white bulding- to the left of that there's a 90* right hander which is up hill and blind - the car gets light and drifts coming of that one - probabley my favourite corner.

 

Any updates on the results after the sway bars are installed?

Thanks,
Jason

 

Half-fastracing, did you get those weight numbers?

 

I installed Spohn's 34mm/25mm sway bars last year and droped 1 to 1.5 seconds on my autocross runs. I had GM 34mm hollow/21mm solid bars before.

 

Can you describe the change in driving dynamics?

Thanks,
Jason

 

as a combo it is hard to say what would be hard to say what woudl be good

a lot of it has to do with weight of the car front to back
spring rates
damper settings
stuff like that

all those make a difference as far as what sway bars you would want to get



also for me I wouldn't want thick sway bars
I would like the wheels to be able to operated seperate from one another rather then how they work with sway bars

they tie the tires together
they also do very little for braking and such


for me I woudl rather go with stronger springs/struts to make the car have less roll

 

I remember reading something about sway bars affecting the stiffness requirement for strut/shock/ springs.

I suppose if you stiffen the sway bar you reduce the amount of weight transfer, so less gets moved from one wheel to the other. That I imagine would reduce the spring rate required for each wheel. I suppose that drag racers want more sway bar and less spring as they want the front/back weight transfer, and less lateral transfer.

There was an article in racecar engineering about a company who made a sway bar system that croos-tied the sway bars. The passenger front was tied to the driver rear and vice versa. I would love to know how it would work on the street, but I bet that was one spendy gadget.

Jason.

 

After installing the Spohn sway bars the car obviously had less body roll but didn't really affect ride quality. As for cornering, the car exhibited less push and was able to rotate through the turns better, but it didn't drastically change the balance of the car. The car also seemed to be less darty on uneven roads.

A sway bar is a spring rate transfer device. The spring on the compressed side of the car is assisted by the spring of the uncompressed side, though the sway bar which is a spring itself (just like a torsion bar).