i am looking at spohn sway bars and see they got:

http://www.spohn.net/category.cfm?categoryid=1051

all that. LOL

i am probly gonna buy the set. 1 5/16 solid front and 1 inch rear.

But they offer the 7/8" rear sway bar. alot of other companies have smaller sway bars for the rear and a inch is about as big as i have seen. LOL

whats the advantages/disadvantages/differences with going with the larger sway bar over the smaller 7/8 one???

my car is a 89 Iroc. i am running a hotchis adj. panhard bar and soon to be having spohn lower control arms and LCA brackets this spring. i also got Eibach prokit springs and Tokico 5 way adjustable shocks. they are pretty new with one summer or 7K miles on them.

what do you think? thanks

Oh, and i have found that handling is greatly effected on how i set up my shocks. too stiff results in the rear end kicking out (understeer right?, i always get that confused LOL). it seem to squat down and hug corners at the softer settings. wondering if the swaybars and LCA's will help balance out the handling cuz its always either a bit too stiff or too soft.

 

From my take on reading.

If you drag race the car, you want a large one on the rear to help even traction to both, small/none one the front, for weight transfer.

Autocross, you want a nice matching set to your spring rates, and driving style. What works for one person, may not work for you.

Daily driving. I'm guessing your car should have the largest already being an Iroc. It should have 36mm front and 24mm rear.

 

thanks for the help

i dont know what i got. think its 34 solid but maybe hollow. i wonder if its worth it to buy those aftermarket bars? not sure if it will help much over what i got now

 

it says on spohns website that the smaller bar is more oriented to those running real stiff springs (ie not Eibach) so i guess i need the bigger one for now

 

Do you autocross or open track the car? If not, I wouldn't worry about it and spend the $285 + shipping elsewhere.

I'd say you're better off investing in some better tires versus throwing more money at the suspension when you can only corner so hard anyway. My $.02

 

your saying that more suspension mods will be a waste as the car sits now with the stock 16x8 iroc rims? it doesnt go to a track but i do take a few back road corners hard and was thinking of doing up all my suspension first. i am running a decent street tire that is real soft and grips real good. although i havent tryed anything else in comparison but it has done fine for me so far. maybe wider rims will be next mod. lol

 

instead of paying the 260 plus shipping maybe a good idea to take the front and rear sway bars off and get them powdercoater or chromed and then put them back in for way less than 260. Then they'll look aftermarket!

 

You probably already have sway bars that are close to ideal. I have a 24mm rear bar that I will be replacing with a smaller one next summer. The popular setup for auto cross is 150# springs and a 22mm hollow bar. You really do not want the rear to be too stiff for what you describe as you use. As you noticed stiffer rear settings make the rear slide a bit more (oversteer). This is a case where too much is deffinetly a bad thing. buy a wonderbar and a stb and you will get more for your money.

 

I have the 36/24mm combo from from a ws-6 that i scored from a local junkyard for 25bucks, got them stripped and powder-coated...best $25 i've spent to date, made a world of difference!

 

props up to you for saving your money to be used in other crucial areas, as well as doing what i said others should if they wanted them to look aftermarket....powder coat them.

Props up again...good job....others should do the same

Got any pics? And do you know the sizes that come stock on an 86 Iroc 305, 5 speed, 373 rear end?

 

irocstang i think its either the 32/22 or 34/22 combo for an '86 iroc 305, 5sp. i'm not dead sure which it is though.

 

Orr,

I don't see you listing that you currently have any SFC's. I would strongly suggest you buy them first before messing with any swaybars because the later addition of them will throw the balance of the car back off. You do not need to run as big a rear swaybar with SFC's installed.

As for the shock adjustments making the car slide-

The Tokico's uyou have increase BOTH the compression and rebound setting together. On a shock of that style, it iwill generally cause the car to harshly dribble the rear end out on a corner when on the stiffer settings since the compression increases too rapidly. You want a rebound increase, but not as much compression increase in proportion. Thus- A better purchase solution is to lower the rear roll center of the car and increase the leverage on the shock compression and also increase the cars bite coming off the corners.

I would suggest-
1) keeping the bars you currently have for now
2) buyinng good perimeter style SFC's (Spohns SFC's are my choice)
3)Buying and installing a Jegs panhard (axleside)relocation bracket. Lowerthe panhard on the axle side about 1-1 1/2"
4) running the Tokicos on a higher setting with the above installed and see how the *** end plants better all around.

At this point you can better taylor the rear of the car with a swaybar choice up or down based on how its reacting in the steady state of the corner.

5) A very noticiable and worthy pourchase would be buying some solid bearing steel strut mounts from Spohn- that is a must have handling addition to every third gen.

 

Someone told me that a 3rd gen would benefit from having the panhard dropped up to 4 inches on the axleside. Is this for road race/autocross w/ higher rate springs? What factors/mods determine how low you mount the PHR is what I'm asking?

Ben

 

Depends how much the car is lowered, how much weight has been stripped off the car (such as interior stripped to race weight will inflict less roll leverage on the roll centers) combined with what spring rates you have and are trying, etc, etc...

There are so many factors that play into this choice because it depends on the stsability of the roll axis (imaginay line that runs between the front roll center and the rear roll center). If you are running a very low car with still slightly soft springs that will dive under hard braking and linear rear springs and low rebound rear shocks that will lift under that same hard braking, then you may need the roll center lowered about 4 " to compensate.

Every car is different because of the different options we buy and install. But I can garantee you that every car needs at the very minimum a 1" drop in the rear roll center even with everything stock height and stock componants. The roll centers were off to begin with from the factory.

Now withthat said, V8 third gens notoriously suffer from friont end push- meaning you turn the steering wheel and they still want to go forward for an instant untill they react. This is dramatically lowered from the simple install of solid strut mounts to eliminate the rubber factory strut mount from flexing under abrupt turning conditions and changing the front steering geometry under those flex conditions. The car then bites late and produces snap oversteer from the rear roll center being too high.