STX Rules and Setup Questions

[finch1750]

It was probably discussed but buried now. Are the new Whiteline LCAs legal? Looks like they may have more metal than stock.

[smg1138]

Originally Posted by finch1750

It was probably discussed but buried now. Are the new Whiteline LCAs legal? Looks like they may have more metal than stock.

Yes

[GeorgeJFrick]

Originally Posted by finch1750

It was probably discussed but buried now. Are the new Whiteline LCAs legal? Looks like they may have more metal than stock.

http://www.ft86club.com/forums/showp...postcount=2027

That is my main post on the matter with a listing of the brands. The new Whitelines which are currently out of stock everywhere, are SPC's with STX legal bushings.

[jbailey8748]

Originally Posted by GeorgeJFrick

http://www.ft86club.com/forums/showp...postcount=2027

That is my main post on the matter with a listing of the brands. The new Whitelines which are currently out of stock everywhere, are SPC's with STX legal bushings.

For what it's worth this is whitelines new rlca


Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G900A using Tapatalk

[toeout]

I emailed Whiteline regarding to their sway bar rates and this their response:

Thank you for contacting us with your product question. The engineering team based out of Australia is the team that stores the sway bar spring rates and in the past it has not always been easy to attain them, proprietary info and all. What we do offer to the general public is a generic sway bar conversion chart which helps estimate the percentage increase in stiffness of the bar. Here is a link the above mentioned chart: http://whiteline.com.au/docs/bulletins/BL-281.pdf

Using the chart I can come up with the following estimations:

20mm Adjustable Front BSF45Z-
Soft: 38% stiffer
Hard: 70% stiffer

22mm Adjustable Front BSF45XZ-
Soft: 105% stiffer
Hard: 148% stiffer

16mm Adjustable Rear BSR53Z-
Soft: 38% stiffer
Medium: 71% stiffer
Hard: 117% stiffer

[DocWalt]

I literally just went through that info last night trying to choose potential off the shelf bars. I guess I should have bothered posting it

[strat61caster]

Those numbers don't agree with the chart, unless I'm dumber than I thought.
18mm OE
20mm Whiteline = 52% 85%
22mm Whiteline = 123% 167%

At this point I don't trust any % estimates.

Edit: Kind of frustrates me that nobody makes a sway bar softer than stock that I can find, Cusco might be but I can't find solid info on it aside from bar thickness and price.

[DocWalt]

Originally Posted by strat61caster

Those numbers don't agree with the chart, unless I'm dumber than I thought.
18mm OE
20mm Whiteline = 52% 85%
22mm Whiteline = 123% 167%

At this point I don't trust any % estimates.

What you posted does indeed match the chart.

I'm not willing to spend the money on a bunch of different bars, so I'm debating between Perrin's 19mm and Whiteline's 20mm and Perrin's 16mm rear bar. It would be great to have numbers that I could trust. That said, comparing Perrin's claims vs Whiteline's chart correlates well enough, and doing the math on tubular vs solid Strano's bar correlates well too.

[strat61caster]

Originally Posted by DocWalt

What you posted does indeed match the chart.

I'm not willing to spend the money on a bunch of different bars, so I'm debating between Perrin's 19mm and Whiteline's 20mm and Perrin's 16mm rear bar. It would be great to have numbers that I could trust. That said, comparing Perrin's claims vs Whiteline's chart correlates well enough, and doing the math on tubular vs solid Strano's bar correlates well too.

Yeah they're all close, I was in the exact same boat a few days ago, jumped on the Whiteline because Perrin is out of stock everywhere for another week or so and I've got an event on Sunday. They seem to overlap based on their claims AND back of the envelope calculations, good enough for me right now.

Wanna buy the Perrin and we can trade in a few months if you want stiffer and I want softer?

[DocWalt]

Haha. I think we'll be fine either way, especially since the differences will be negligible.

[renfield90]

The percentage estimates are usually crap, and really only useful to an order of magnitude when comparing bars from the same manufacturer.

Stating that spring rates on the bars is "proprietary" is crap, and no different than stating that a coilover set's spring rates are proprietary. There is no magic sauce here, just basic physics - when one side of the axle compresses more than the other the bar provides a resistive force which grows roughly linearly based on the difference in compression.

If that's what Whiteline actually said I will have to rethink using any of their products in the future. It's pure applesauce. It means they either don't know what the bar does, or they don't care.

Hotchkis used to quote rates both in percentage terms and in lbs/in. Gone from their website now but I found it here: http://fastscions.com/i-23789189-hot...2013-2016.html

Front 1” (25.4mm) Tubular 2-Way Adjustable

500 lbs/in (170 % Stiffer than Stock)
630 lbs/in (245 % Stiffer than Stock)

This implies a stock front bar rate of 185lbs/in and their percentage claims are in line with this.

185 + (185 * 1.7) = 499.5 lbs/in
185 + (185 * 2.45) = 638.25 lbs/in

[DocWalt]

Does anyone have experience with comparison between those fat bars and something smaller like the Whiteline 20mm on an STX car? I've heard a lot of talk about bars all in the same size range (19mm to 22mm)

I know a local C-Street guy has tried three different bars and he's ended up with the smallest of the three he's tried. Still complains about lack of overall front grip though it's obviously a lot better in transitions. Obviously he's much more limited on alignment, so camber alone would likely fix that.

[renfield90]

Originally Posted by DocWalt

I know a local C-Street guy has tried three different bars and he's ended up with the smallest of the three he's tried. Still complains about lack of overall front grip though it's obviously a lot better in transitions. Obviously he's much more limited on alignment, so camber alone would likely fix that.

I would question this. Typically the fat bar helps a CS car more in transitions due to the weight transfer happening faster - my car was best in slaloms with my Hotchkis bar at full stiff, to the point where someone who was used to driving the 6 time XP national champion Lotus drove my car and said "wow, this actually slaloms really good." On the soft setting it was still very good, but not as good as hard.

Where the fat bar hurts you is in steady state transitions where the car will want to push, and you might be able to achieve a slightly higher max lateral G load by going with a smaller bar. It will, however, put power down with less power-on oversteer than the smaller bar, and so I compensated for the push by driving lines that let me get on the power sooner.

For an STX car the sway bar is less important. Whereas the stock car will have many mm of suspension compression available (which results in a large weight transfer by the sway bar), a proper STX car will only have a few. Because you can make dramatic changes to the balance of the car using spring rates, the bars should be used to fine tune that balance.

I swear by big bars as a personal suspension philosophy, but may need to go smaller once I select springs and shocks. It is mostly personal preference though and there's no substitute for trying them yourself.

[GeorgeJFrick]

Considering the problems I've had with LCAs, you guys are making the stock sway bars look platinum. I'll just go ahead and go into data collection mode on sways for now.

Edit: Thought I'd share my research so far. Tables on here suck so if you want the google spreadsheet let me know. Would be nice if the front Hotchkis was as adjustable as the rear. Prices are probably wrong by now:

== FRONT ==
Front Sway Bar OEM Thickness: 18.0mm Adjustable: No $124.53
ADJ (Megan) Thickness: 25.4mm Adjustable: 2 Way Bushings: Thermoplastic Vulcanizate $187.00
Godspeed 22mm No Performance Urethane $60.00
ST 19mm No polyurethane inc/ endlinks? $189.00
Whiteline 20mm Adjustable: 2 Way w/ adjust. links $269.00
Whiteline 22mm Adjustable: 2 Way w/ adjust. links $296.00
Hotchkis 25.4mm Adjustable: 2 Way $173.00 TSB166F
Tanabe 22mm No $212.00
Eibach 25mm Adjustable: 2 Way $268.00 82105.31
TRD 20.6mm ??? Polyurethane $220.00 PTR11-18130
Perrin 19.0mm Adjustable: 2 Way Polyurethane $206.00 PSP-SUS-130
Perrin 22.0mm Adjustable: 2 Way Polyurethane $217.00 PSP-SUS-130
Cusco 20.0mm ??? 965 311 A20

== REAR ==
Rear Sway Bar OEM 14.0mm Adjustable: No
ADJ (Megan) 19.0mm Adjustable: 2 Way Bushings: Thermoplastic Vulcanizate $155.00
Godspeed 18.0mm No $80.00
ST 17.46mm ??? $136.00 51228
Whiteline 16.0mm Adjustable: 3 Way inc locks. 2115 BSR53Z
Whiteline 18.0mm Adjustable: 3 Way inc locks. $197.00
Hotchkis 19.0mm Adjustable: 4 Way 22445R
Tanabe 18.0mm No $215.00 TSB166R
Eibach 19.0mm Adjustable: 2 Way $240.00 82105.32
TRD 15.8mm ??? $220.00 PTR11-18130
Perrin 16.0mm Adjustable: 3 Way $197.00
Perrin 19.0mm Adjustable: 3 Way $197.00
Perrin 22.0mm Adjustable: 3 Way $230.00
Perrin 25.0mm Adjustable: 3 Way $240.00
Cusco 16.0mm ??? 14.00mm avail? $240.00 965 311 B16