Sway Bars: What's The Trade Off?

[diss7]

The best thing you could do is just buy some adjustable sway bars and play with them.

You can mix and match the bars (aftermarket on front, stock on back, or vice versa) put both aftermarket bars on, but with different settings front and back; its actually quite fun to do. Certainly more fun than trying to over analyse it on internet forums.

Basic info: Stiffer at front, more understeer / less oversteer. Stiffer at back, more oversteer / less understeer. You can read more into it, but that's basically all you need to know, to then go and just play with different settings.

Also, don't make the front and back too different. Don't put on a 18mm adjustable bar on the back, at full hard, with the stock front.

Try
Stock front bar, aftermarket rear bar on soft setting. Does this make you like the car more, or dislike.
If dislike, then try opposite, aftermarket front on soft, stock rear.
If you like stock front and aftermarket rear on soft, maybe then try rear on medium. Then try rear on medium, and pull stock bar out of front, and put front to soft.

You need to know what you like, to know what you are going to like better. Best way to achieve this, is to experience it.

[CSG Mike]

Originally Posted by Captain Snooze

12k springs? omg!

We've experimented with springs a bit... we started with 10k/12k, went as low as 8k/10k and high as 12k/15k, but ultimately came back to 10k/12k as our happy medium for various street tires that we're using. The rates are high enough that we get the razor sharp response that we want out of the steering, but not so high that we're overloading our street tires.

Once we're completely satisfied with the valving of our dampers, we'll start playing with springs to see what range of spring rates our finalized valving will match and again explore r-comps.

Our spring rates were chosen with the stock sways in mind. Our goal is to allow end users of our finalized suspension to choose the spring rate they want for coarse adjustment, and use their chosen sways for fine adjustment.

@diss7's suggestion of playing with sways is a GREAT idea. They're relatively affordable, and will teach you a lot about car balance as you experiment with settings

[Ernest72]

Originally Posted by Racecomp Engineering

There's always been a couple different schools of thought on swaybars in the subaru world. Some guys go for big bars, soft springs, others soft bars, stiff springs.

Definitely advantages and disadvantages to both.

Yes, ideally for a dedicated track car I would use swaybars more as trim device and get more of your roll resistance from your springs.

However, depending on your tire choice you might want a lot of roll resistance. To get that from just springs requires firm coilovers, and it would be nice if they had a great damper. That's a bunch of money. Or get less expensive coilovers with poor damping and deal with the crappy ride quality and performance.

The alternative is to run bigger bars so you don't need need super stiff springs. You'll get better ride quality and it's a heck of a lot cheaper. There are drawbacks as mentioned elsewhere (loss of suspension independence etc.) and you can go TOO big for sure.

I don't strictly think one way is the only way...it really depends on the user and application.

Regardless...it's very important (and I've said this a lot on here as have a few others) to try to pick springs and bars with your tire choice in mind.

- Andy

The whole tire thing is why I have not upgraded my sways from stock. In the summer I am on PS4s, but in NY I need to change summers out for winter. For my BRZ I have been using an all season, BFG comp-2, which have been good but much less grip than PS4. Before you beat me up, I have an 04 WRX with snows, so I don’t need a snow tire on my BRZ for maybe 8-10 snow days a year.

I am also on stock suspension, so I will likely wait until I upgrade the suspension before I consider sways. I like to do this in a systematic approach. This way I can pick the suspension I like and tires I like. Once I am happy with that then maybe consider sways if needed. But I am only street and some spirited driving on some good twisty roads we have here.

Funny thing is tires and sways were the first mods on my 04 WRX and boy did they make a huge difference in handling. But the BRZ is totally different.

[solidONE]

Wait.. I thought sway bars, along with BBK has no potential to improve performance or lap times according to the 'experts' selling them. Now I'm confused.