Larger Sway bars. Calling anybody that's fitted them. Vetruck any comments?

[Vetruck]

Hi guys, sorry Ive been so busy of late. I remembered i have not been on here for several days so came on to check on things.

I have a 26 front and 18 rear on my 4cyl car. however, I run the sport 6cyl springs on my light weight 4 cyl car. AND I run koni yellows on full rebound front and rear settings.

Lets analyse this- The car I have is 200lbs lighter then the 96 280's (mine a 94 C220) With the heavier Eibach sport springs for the C280 and C36 applications on the lighter car. What this does is decreases nose dive without harming independent wheel function. If we were to compare that to me simply using the normal Eibach c220 springs for my weight engine, and then go to the larger of the two swaybar choices (the 28 instead of the 26 I used) the car would have about the same roll resistance BUT would have more nose dive under hard braking. The Koni max rebound settings also dramatically help with anti body roll into corners. Swaybars are a fine tuning tool. My car to begin with (as I assume most of yours do also) had a lot of understeer. A larger front swaybar only adds to that. Nose dive on a car will lengthen the time it takes for a car to react to cornering inputs of the steering wheel. The quicker you stand on the car's loaded weight the quicker the chassis will react. A stiffer front swaybar but lighter front springs will cas a car to stand on the outside front wheel, but also not retain corner height and will compress for a moment longer as it gives was under load. Giving way will also tug up the inside front wheel ****Which is the wheel that turns you****. Think of grabbing a pole with your left arm as running past and the force yanks you to a left turn...as opposed to pushing off a wall with the right hand to turn left. You right arm will give under compression and delay any response in the left turn direction.

THUS

The heavier springs and lighter swaybar will help load the inside wheel to grab and turn the car better then the heavier bar and lighter spring rate.

Heavy bar AND heavy spring rate will cause understeer as well and make the lateral roll load mostly the front outside tire overloading it compared to how much the outside rear tire loads.

Bigger is not always better.



This goes further if you want me to make your heads hurt...lol- pertaining to vehicle roll centers which are imaginary roll points as to which the car rolls (as in roll pitch and yaw) on. The stiffer front springs help keep the front RC from diving into the dirt rapidly upon braking compression, thus staying higher compared to the vehicles imaginary leverage arm to the center of gravity. This decreased roll leverage results in the lesser need of swaybar size. In other words, my roll bar effectiveness of my 26mm bar is probably a lot more effective on my overall roll resistance then the 30 mm bar on the said car above due to roll center migrations or lack of. I also maintain better ride comfort and better mechanical grip due to independent wheel travel not being locked up by the larger sway bar connecting both side together as one.- I get better straight line braking grip as well.

Any questions? ask away. This is technical stuff we are getting into and most advanced chassis techs never understand this stuff in a lifetime. I however could easily teach a 4 year college course on this stuff.