ryan1112

So I installed a front sway bar from Strano and thought that I would give my opinion on it since I’ve been to a few autocrosses since I put it on.

I’ll start off by saying that I was under the impression that a larger front bar would make the car understeer more by tightening up the front end. I always thought this because this is what I learned from listening to people on forums and from making assumptions after looking at aftermarket websites. After adding Sam’s 22mm rear bar my understeer was dramatically helped but I still had just a little left. I was even thinking of going to a 25mm rear bar. I brought this up to Sam and he told me to go with a front bar instead of a bigger rear bar. Having always helped me before, I decided to take Sam’s advice thinking that at minimum it would help steering response.

So after I got the front bar installed I went to an autocross expecting for the car to push like hell and I would come in dead last. I got to the starting line expecting the worst and by the time I got through the first corner I was shocked. The front bar actually decreased the understeer! It helped so much that I was the fastest car on street tires by a mile.

I put my thinking cap on and this is what I came up with. It’s all about camber curve, contact patch of the tire, and weight distribution. I checked my tire temps across the tire from when I went from the stock bar to each of the different adjustment holes on the new bar. As I put the new bar on each stiffer setting, the more even the tire temps got from the inside to outside of the tire. With the stock bar the outside tire temp was much hotter. I realized that I need to fix the end of the car that has the problem. I need more negative camber. My camber plates only got me to -1.3 so I need to adjust camber at the bottom of the strut until I get my tire temps even (which shows that I have optimum contact patch), then adjust the REAR bar to adjust balance. My though process on how to balance the car has been backwards this whole time.

Conclusion, a front bar will help grip until you add too much negative camber or spring rate for it to do otherwise. Even if you aren’t tracking your car a front bar will still help because it tightens up steering feel.

eolson

I need the same. I have an entire changed out set up with adjustability in the front bar, the shocks, a watts link with a roll center designed for my 1" drop. My car was driven and balanced and adjusted by a roadracing/autocross shop. They recommended more negative camber next. Sure enough my front tires are still wearing more on the outside over the last year with hard cornering. More negative camber for me. Erik

Norm Peterson

Your thinking was not exactly backwards - you were just looking at a different aspect of tuning handling balance. Finding the right balance of front and rear roll stiffness and finding the right dynamic camber situation are only two parts of the rather large puzzle called 'handling'.

Since I don't see any mention of a spring swap, I'm going to assume that you're still on the OE springs. In that case, the initial help from the front bar in reducing roll and camber loss is slightly greater than if you'd already added stiffer springs. Which is at least partly offsetting the greater amount of front lateral load transfer, given that you haven't been able to optimize camber for any front bar choice or setting.

I'm surprised that you can only get -1.3° with the plates. You may be able to get a little more negative camber by rotating the upper strut mounts 180° (basically moving the engine side to the fender side and vice versa). The strut mounts themselves are slightly unsymmetrical. If you can do this, it would be far preferable to making your adjustments at the strut bolts.


Norm

ryan1112

I should have added that I have Steeda ultralites. The reason I'm only getting -1.3 is because I also have Steeda ball joints. Before the balljoint I was getting -1.9. The ball joints helped the camber curve. We wenched the car down on an alignment rack before and after the balljoints and before I put them on I would hit max camber after only barely compressing the suspension and then it would start heading back towards positive. Now the suspension has to travel about another 20mm to max out. If I could get back up to -2.0 to -2.5 static camber it would be good.