front and rear sway bar opinions
 

I been talking to a buddy of mine and will be getting RCE yellow springs on my car but on front and rear sway bars my friend is saying get both same size... what is yalls opinion ...best for same size on both or vary it ?

There's no need to change the swaybars at all unless you're doing it for a specific reason like fine-tuning understeer or oversteer. Your car will not have a lot of body roll on RCE Yellows, although a little more than Tarmacs or some other springs. Put some driving time on the springs for a while and then decide if you need to change the swaybars.

I'm on Yellows and OEM struts/shocks and my car is pretty neutral, although I can get the rear end out if I want to. If I had wanted a more tail-happy setup, I would have chosen different springs before I started tweaking swaybars.

In a prefect world, you would get 6 swap bar with vari strength & test it out. But since' it's real world......... Why run different sizes?

+ stock is very good as it is. :D

Big sway bars are also known as a solid axle conversion kit becuase the bigger the bars the less independent your suspension becomes. I would agree with both the posters before me. Put the springs on and then test it and see how the car reacts. It may turn out the springs and shocks screw with your handling and you may then need to do some thing with the sways. But you won't know what till you drive it.

Also keep some thing else in mind. Heavier and heavier suspension can be beneficial on a perfectly groomed track. But in the real world heavy duty suspension can become very dangerous as your tires are in the air a on every bump becuase your suspension stops working or the inside tires are never on the ground because your suspension is to stiff. Few things suck more than falling out of love with your car because you over built it.

When adding sways look for adjustable ones and if no one makes them consider drilling extra holes in them but keep them close to the existing ones because a little distance goes a long way.

It depends what the rates of the new springs are...if they change the stiffness bias, then changing the bias of the bars would be a logical step to keep the same overall balance as stock.

Especially if you live in a part of the world with crap roads. Sometimes the fastest cars are the ones that are the most compliant; build the car for where you drive, not for a racetrack unless that's the only place the car will be driven. Personally, up here in the northeast where roads are crumbling and potholed, I find the OEM spring/shock rates acceptable, and will be controlling lean/geometry with heavier bars only.

It sounds like your friend has no experience with this platform if he's suggesting equal diameter sway bars. Does he have more experience with AWD or FWD cars?

he has more experience with AWD both his previous cars with sti and wrx

gonna force induct the car way later on down the line but trying to build this car to be the ultimate car for like back roads driving

live in san antonio and basically straight drive to work and back in the city ...but on the weekends and so gonna do some back road driving in the country with my buddy n his STI

I just installed the Cusco "soft" sway bars front and rear, and I can tell you it definitely gives more grip without a lot of lean. I can hit a 90 degree corner at 40, come out of it at about 60, with the nannies turned on, and they don't even blink. This is on stock tires too. Wet traction is much better also, especially on roundabouts. If you have really sticky tires you can use stiffer sway bars without sliding off the road, otherwise, track use only.

In that case, definitely just stick with the springs for now. And a performance-oriented alignment, which will require at least a set of camber bolts for the front. Don't even change the tires yet.

These cars are very capable right out of the box. With OEM spec everything, you can push the car hard and reach and exceed the car's limits predictably and gradually. Learn to drive it comfortably at those limits first. Once you start changing everything (better tires, stiffer suspension, more power, etc...) you raise those limits and make going over them a much more abrupt experience, which means it may happen too fast to do anything about it. Make sure the nut behind the wheel is calibrated properly before going too far down the modification rabbit hole.

The misinformation that comes out of you is astounding sometimes... any videos of these 90* corners at 40 on stock tires?

I highly doubt you have more grip on softer sways, what's probably happening is that it's shifting the grip balance rearward (increased understeer) so you feel like you can drive harder.

I would guess it shifted the grip balance rearward because under compression the fronts lose grip faster than the rears due to the horrible camber curve up front and good camber curve in the rear. More roll/compression on the outside will give the tire with the better contact patch (from better camber) more grip, which is the rear tire.

Have you found the tractive understeer post yet? I wasn't sure whether to laugh, get angry, or cry.

I certainly won't be reducing my sway bar rates at any point, that's for sure...