Sway bar Suggestions?

[kuleinc]

I've lowered the front of the car, rear to follow soon, not stupid low, but decent. The sway bar is pushing the control arms back at a funny angle, so I need a lowered swaybar. When replacing the sway bar I also want to upgrade to poly bushings of course. I also want to add in adjustable camber and caster.

Here is the question: Who makes a decent swaybar or are they all about the same quality just buy from whoever sells the cheapest? I know you get what you pay for, so I would like other peoples input on this, I'm not willing to pay $500 for a gold plated swaybar but want something decent, I already have topline struts and springs and a strut tower brace. I have KYB gas adjusts in the rear, and will be putting 17*7 wheels on soon. I want to be able to get the alignment dialed in properly. My struts are the wierd three bolt type.

Suggestions would be nice,links would be awesome. Some sites aren't clear on what goes where. I may not need adjustable castor but I've read this can make a big difference in handleing without much increase in effort.

My car is not a track only car, it is mainly driven on the street, hard. I drive it to and from work, all over. It has a front Kamei spoiler and a herrod helper, possibly soon a duckbill for the decklid...

[wrenchnride247]

Topline has the "camber fix" kit you want (new eccentric bolts, sway bar bushings, and sway bar) This would be your cheapest route in the US.

[evilC]

If you've lowered the car so that the sway bar is pushing the TCA back then a number of things are happening:
1) You will have lost some caster that will make the vehicle wander a bit.
2) You will also have lost any anti-dive that was built into the suspension settings.

The answer won't just be a sway bar. IMO you need to be a bit more radical. The front suspension is very simple. You could add a goodly amount of adjustability by:

A) Fabricating an adjustable TCA
B) Adding a compression strut. The pick up point for the strut would be on the trans tunnel. The height of the bracket would determine the anti-dive so it could be made with a number of pivot points. The compression strut also determines the caster.
C) The sway bar would then be divorced from the TCA location duties so with a simple link onto the TCA it too could be made adjustable
So in conclusion, for a small limited amount of work you could have a FULLY adjustable suspension, not only for ride height, but camber, caster and roll stiffness. The end result would be as good as and in some way better than a double wishbone layout.

Clive

[kuleinc]

I'm not a suspension guru,I do understand most of what you said, but what does TCA stand for? Top control arm?

[evilC]

The TCA is the Track Control Arm i.e. the bottom arm that pivots on the centreline of the car and connects to the bottom of the Macpherson strut. It has a bush at the inner pivot point and one at the end of the anti-roll bar. I intend to fabricate something along the lines of what I described myself at some stage. I will re-use the TCA bushes as they are polyurethane, one for the new TCA inner pivot and one for the inner pivot for the compression strut just to reduce the NVH (Noise, Vibration and Harshness) as this is essentially a road going car not a pure racer.

If you look at the Japanaese racer featured on this web site you will see that this has a 'tension' strut which controls the caster. I'm not keen on the tension strut arrangement for two reasons:

a) The loads are transferred into what is the weakest part of the chassis that can suffer from a lack of torsional stiffness. The compression strut I described feeds the loads back into the chassis at one of the stiffest locations.
b) To effect anti-dive the line through the front and rear inner pivot points should intersect with the rear trailing arm line somewhere above the central tunnel and inside the car. The higher the intersection the graeter the anti-dive. If you rely on the anti-roll bar or a tension strut then to get a steep enough angle the front pivot point would need to be lowered closer to the tarmac, which will limit the angle to be acheived. With the inner pivot of a compression strut there is less of a problem of getting it high enough.

Clive

[Humble]

Clive's got the right idea if you can do the fab. If you can't or want to go the cheap route grab caber fix sway bar bushings (what I have on the yellow car) or a modified sway bar for lowered supers (what's on the race car) both from topline. Bushes are cheap, but if you're going to upgrade the sway bar anyway might as well grab one for a lowered super.

[kuleinc]

Ok so I'm going to upgrade ANYWAYS, so I'll get the lowered super swaybar, do I still need to get camber and caster adjustment pieces or no?