Carcrazycorey1

So I've played with the idea of removing the front sway bar in my 2005 GT and decided to do it for the track last night to see if I could improve my launch at all. Well it got rained out and it's rescheduled for this coming Friday. My question is will I be alright driving without the front sway bar for a week? I know that handling wise it'll be worse on the street but honestly it's not that bad around town. I'm more concerned about it possibly messing other components up by not being there. It's not just the links removed, it's the entire sway bar in the front.

Murgatroy

Disclaimer: This experience is regarding a FWD car. Your results may vary.

Eight years ago I removed the front sway bar on my `90 Celica. It was never put back on. This enables faster turn in and allows the car to handle with a little bit of oversteer, as oppose to understeer like a normal FWD. This makes it much better to drive in autocross and is not unheard of.

The car has been lowered extremely with coilovers, although I am not a member of the culture, or even of that age, the term 'stanced' can and has been used to describe the car. This setup has ~75k on it? I have eaten one ball joint. That had nothing to do with the sway bar, that had to do with the fact that the car is lowered more than four inches from stock.

While I have no personal experience in a RWD drag racing situation without one, I do know that it is common. I never removed the sway bars on my RWD street/drag car because at the time I was worried it would negatively affect my handling in the mountains. After removing it on Chaos, I wouldn't really be worried about it.

See disclaimer, but I wouldn't let it keep me up at night if I removed it.

UPRSharad

You won't have any issue with the swaybar removed.

moosestang

I was going to do this. Last time I tried to get the endlinks loose, they wouldn't budge. did you end up going this past Friday? I only saw one other 05-09 stang and I'm pretty sure it wasn't yours.

jdback19

Had mine off for 3 years while i was boosted. Youre golden pony boy.

Norm Peterson

I'm guessing that OP has already discovered how well (or not) it works for his individual street driving, which hopefully has not involved hard cornering or sudden emergency maneuvers.

What I expect at the dragstrip are slightly quicker short times and ETs - a few hundredths of seconds at best - and launches that may be somewhat less straight than before.


Norm

moosestang

What about on a lowered car? I need all the help I can get transferring weight. I'm guessing being lowered with stiffer springs and shocks, the sway will be less during emergency maneuvers.

Norm Peterson

Lowering may actually increase roll, as a separate effect from removing the front sta-bar. The extra spring rate you have over stock partially compensates for but does not fully offset both of those effects combined (although it should more than cover for the lowering effect, where the front roll center drops 2 or 3 times as fast as the CG does).

I wouldn't suggest trying to keep up with a bike being driven anywhere near like your avatar pic without a front bar though.


Norm