Anyone broken a rear swaybar endlink before?
11-09-2009, 05:09 AM
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Anyone broken a rear swaybar endlink before?
I was putting my snows on this weekend and noticed my rear swaybar endlink had separated where the "4 pegs go into the cup." I'm pretty sure I would have noticed this one of the other times I had the wheels off or when I did the brakes.
I guess that would help explain why the car was suddenly so pushy at the last event...
A search only popped up one other instance, and that was someone with aftermarket bars. Any stock autocrossers run into this?
I guess that would help explain why the car was suddenly so pushy at the last event...
A search only popped up one other instance, and that was someone with aftermarket bars. Any stock autocrossers run into this?
11-09-2009, 07:51 AM
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My left rear endlink got into a bind(twisted) when I had my Hotchkis bar on. IMO these should be beefier, ever seen a corvette endlink? I just ordered a new set all around, just in case. approx $100 www.reliableperformancecenter.com
Last edited by mulkio; 11-09-2009 at 07:54 AM. Reason: sp.
11-09-2009, 10:08 AM
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11-09-2009, 11:35 AM
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I feel fairly confident the suspension wasn't messed with.
I think the car has never been put up with a jack before and me doing that put just enough stress on a freak weak part to break it.
Thanks for the input, guys.
I think the car has never been put up with a jack before and me doing that put just enough stress on a freak weak part to break it.
Thanks for the input, guys.
11-09-2009, 03:20 PM
#6
I was putting my snows on this weekend and noticed my rear swaybar endlink had separated where the "4 pegs go into the cup." I'm pretty sure I would have noticed this one of the other times I had the wheels off or when I did the brakes.
I guess that would help explain why the car was suddenly so pushy at the last event...
A search only popped up one other instance, and that was someone with aftermarket bars. Any stock autocrossers run into this?
I guess that would help explain why the car was suddenly so pushy at the last event...
A search only popped up one other instance, and that was someone with aftermarket bars. Any stock autocrossers run into this?
11-09-2009, 06:01 PM
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It didn't break it just twisted it, uninstalled it and it straightened out.
11-09-2009, 06:04 PM
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11-20-2009, 12:38 PM
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Endlink advice. This is offered because few people know how to use endlinks properly and a person's first experience with them is usually to DEAL WITH A PROBLEM the've encountered.
Foreward:
If you do your own alignment and know what you're doing then you probably already know the following info.
If you just started to play with ride height, different wheels, different swaybars, coilovers, new end links or shocks YOU MAY HAVE THIS ISSUE. Consider this a premptive word of advice to peek under you car and or re-address your end links.
OK....Here we go.
ANY TIME (AND I'M USING BOLD CHARACTERS FOR STRONG EMPHASIS) you setup your car (change ride height, springs, camber, toe, etc) YOU MUST FIRST DISCONNECT ONE ENDLINK ON THE FRONT AND ONE ON THE REAR
This is why its a great idea to have setup check list to follow. If you forget to do this your efforts have been wasted and you'll have to do it all over again. Just as you should set your tire pressures to what they would be when they are HOT on track prior to setup, you need to dissconnect your end links. Write that down somewhere. Right now.
A quick swaybar course:
Swaybars are designed to increase and decrease roll resistance or stiffness. Typically they are used to add or subtract understeer to the front and add or subtract oversteer in the rear. The beauty of the swaybars is that you can adjust them at the track easily. In otherwords, you can tune your car's suspension at the track with something other than tire pressures (which ideally are at a desired target value and confirmed with a tire pyrometer---another long post at some point).
With swaybars it is possible to address an issue you have at the front of the car. Let's take understeer as an example. Understeer is typically experienced and felt on a road course when adding power to the car and the car doesn't want to point in the desired direction you want it to go. Normal symptoms of u-steer are excessive steering input (driver really turns the wheel to get the car pointed in the right direction) and the long tire screechy sound as you go around a corner with the car headed off track. Cars that experience a lot of understeer mid corner and corner exit are slow off the corners. This is because you have to wait to go to full power. Going to full power as early as you can is the key to getting a great run down the straight. This is speed. Speed reduces lap times. Understeering cars inhibit/prohibit a faster exit speed from being acheived. BTW, the correct way to determine if you have understeer is to enter a corner and roll through the corner as quickly as you can with near zero or as little throttle as possible. If your car understeers in these conditions then you probably have a setup that is understeering. Small amounts of understeed can be dialed in or out with a swaybar. Use it. Try it. Swaybars are your friends. Experiment with them and learn something. Or....you can be afraid like most people and never, ever, ever touch them. I'll suggest to everyone that those people who try things are the drivers that learn. Drivers that learn go faster, are safer and can do more with the same car than other drivers. Trust me when I tell you that you can't mess something up that another person can't fix. Come to the track with a plan and execute it. Test days are great for this.
OK. So we've determined that corner XYZ on some track is giving us Understeer. A few things we can do. (a) Drive the corner differently. Wait, wait, wait and then go to full power. If your ability to hit a very late apex is not your strength, chances are your driving style has a TENDANCY to go to full power early. Congrats! You are normal. Most all beginner and intermediate drivers experience this. Consider this an opportunity to improve your driving skill set. (b) you are waiting and waiting and waiting to go to full power, you have slowed your car down to a crawl and when you go to power or full power the car understeers or "pushes" off the track. Symptoms of this are the feeling of running out of room to stay on the track and having to lift off the power to allow the car to point in preferred direction and stay on track. You can do a couple of things to reduce your understeer:
1. Address the front end to reduce Understeer. To reduce understeer at the front end you'll want to soften the front bar. This is done by moving the endlinks (both of them) toward the end of the bar---away from where it mounts. Technically this gives the bar more leverage to twist (kind of like when you use a long handle on a wrench to remove a rusty stubbon nut off of something). This gives the car more front roll. This increases front grip in an understeering situation.
2. Address the rear end to reduct Understeer You can also address this front understeer by (ready for this) addressing the REAR of the car. What? Huh? Yes. You want to DECREASE rear grip (therefore you get more front grip). To do this you stiffen the rear bar. Essentially what your doing is taking rear grip out of the car so the rear end wants to come around a little more in a turn which helps point the car in your desired direction. You get can the same result when you decrease your rear spring rate---the back end of the car will roll over just a tiny bit more, put less weight on the inside tire and slightly overburden the outside tire which will make the rear end of the car want to pivot a little more around the front.
Word of Caution: It takes a very skilled driver to setup a car. You drive a car right up on the edge without excessive throttle or brake inputs and listen to what the car is telling you. This I've found is what distinguishes a very good driver from an average driver. Some drivers can just drive anything they jump into. They are naturally fast. They adapt their style to the car and adjust accordingly. Sometimes they can't tell you what are car is doing. They just say "I dunno, I just drive it as fast as I can". These guys are truly talented. Truely. Other drivers can do the same thing but tell you what the car is doing and where it's doing it. These are very, very, very good drivers. You'll need data acquistion to help discover some of these issues. Perhaps the understeer only occurs in high speed sweepers? Perhaps only in right hand slow corners. Fine tuning suspension is truly a talent. Many racers I know are fast and have little idea on how to articulate what the car is doing. They just drive. Therefore, it is difficult to fine tune your suspension. You can use these same principles to take some large chunks of handling problems out of your cars. Some of you may be able to get to the finer tuning side of things. Go for it. Try it. Don't be afraid to fail.
So what does all of this have to do with endlinks???
Well, endlinks are the connections to your swaybars. If you lower or raise ride height, put on a different spring, change bars, camber, toe you are changing the tension on these endlinks. When you change this tension you are influencing your suspension's mechanics. When you hear the term "preload" this is a PRE-LOADED swaybar. Think about it as backswing in golf thats all loaded up and ready to attack the golf ball. This tension is not at rest when the car is at rest. Not good. So you make a change to your car during setup and forget to dissconnect the bars and you've added preload which may add to more under or oversteer. It can even make the car handle ultra funky by exposing these under/over symptoms in right or left turns only. When this happens most beginner and intermediate driver types start pointing and blaming their shocks, springs, tire or something else that has nothing to do with the actual issue. WHICH IS WHY it is so important to know what your endlinks are doing.
What to do each and everytime you make an adjustment or install new bars, springs, change ride height etc.
1. Dissconnect one of your front and one of your rear endlinks.
2. Make whatever adjustments you want to make. Perhaps lower ride height. Perhaps add more camber. Perhaps you're putting on an entirely new shock and spring package.
3. Reinstall the endlinks WHEN THE CAR IS ON ALL FOURS AND ON A LEVEL SURFACE. Reinstalling the endlinks when the car is jacked up on its side is the same as adding preload. The correct way to do this is to have the cars TIRES on four stands or on a lift where you can get under it. Again, the suspension has to be under it's normal static load with all tires sitting nicely on the ground. Ideally there is someone sitting in the driver's seat to replicate the exact weight that is in the car during your driving event. We like to perform all our setups with a 1/2 tank of fuel and use watersoftener bags of salt in the drivers seat for driver weight.
4. After the links are installed you should be able to hold on to these links and twist them a bit. They should freely move. You should be able to jiggle or rattle them. This would indicate no preload.
Symptoms of preload:
1. No way in hell you can remove your endlinks.
2. Suspension is so bound up that you have to jack up the car, lower the car, discconect the bar because you can't get the endlink bolt out of either the sway bar side or the control arm.
3. When you remove the bar the car makes a serious motion that scares the crap out of you and you think about all the times your mom said "you'll poke an eye out". That would be MAJOR preload. This also means that your car was whacked big time. F'd up yo schizzle dizzle.
So.......Do some winter maintenance. Take your end links off and make sure the threads are free and the nuts can move and can be easily shortened or lengthened. Make sure the little spherial round shiney ball bearing looking thing with the hole in it can more freely. If it doesn't, try some grease. If it still doesn't move throw it away and get another one.
Something else you may want to try with a friend is this: Increase or decrease your ride height and see if your links have enough length and/or can be shortened. Easy to do with adjustable collar coilover suspenion. All you need to do is make a dramatic height adjustment with the shock collars. Take 5 or 6 turns (all up or all down) all the way around. Your goal is to really lower the car and then to really raise the car. Make sure the end links are first dissconnected. Also make sure that when you turn your height adjustment collars you are actually lowering or raising the car.
Now reconnect the bars. Notice how the links need adjustment now? Make the adjustment. Once again, these need to freely move or have the ability to jiggle when connected. All 4 of them.
Now go the other way (car is low or car is high). Do you have enough endlink adjustment to do this? If not then you should think about getting some end links that have more adjustment.
Several links that I've seen on the market will not SHORTEN enough. If you have these and are running a ride height where you have to jack the car to install them then you've got problems. We make our own now. You'll want to figure out if those neat little buggers that people buy because they're cheap and they think they do something magical ACTUALLY FIT AND WORK!
Hopefully this has helped some of you understand the proper use of endlinks.
Happy Rotoring.
BTW, We are headed to the NASA Road Atlanta December event. I have 3 RX8's in the shop and none of them have a motor installed. Building new cars for 2010 and beyond. Jason Andrew and I will be driving with Tom Neel. Tom owns the www.partsgroup.com and has a silver RX8. If you're in the area---stop on by.
Meyer out
Pics of of our 2 rotor 13b NA RX-8 w/Approx 300 flywheel hp here: www.meyer-motorsports.com Should be a killer zoom zoomer.
Foreward:
If you do your own alignment and know what you're doing then you probably already know the following info.
If you just started to play with ride height, different wheels, different swaybars, coilovers, new end links or shocks YOU MAY HAVE THIS ISSUE. Consider this a premptive word of advice to peek under you car and or re-address your end links.
OK....Here we go.
ANY TIME (AND I'M USING BOLD CHARACTERS FOR STRONG EMPHASIS) you setup your car (change ride height, springs, camber, toe, etc) YOU MUST FIRST DISCONNECT ONE ENDLINK ON THE FRONT AND ONE ON THE REAR
This is why its a great idea to have setup check list to follow. If you forget to do this your efforts have been wasted and you'll have to do it all over again. Just as you should set your tire pressures to what they would be when they are HOT on track prior to setup, you need to dissconnect your end links. Write that down somewhere. Right now.
A quick swaybar course:
Swaybars are designed to increase and decrease roll resistance or stiffness. Typically they are used to add or subtract understeer to the front and add or subtract oversteer in the rear. The beauty of the swaybars is that you can adjust them at the track easily. In otherwords, you can tune your car's suspension at the track with something other than tire pressures (which ideally are at a desired target value and confirmed with a tire pyrometer---another long post at some point).
With swaybars it is possible to address an issue you have at the front of the car. Let's take understeer as an example. Understeer is typically experienced and felt on a road course when adding power to the car and the car doesn't want to point in the desired direction you want it to go. Normal symptoms of u-steer are excessive steering input (driver really turns the wheel to get the car pointed in the right direction) and the long tire screechy sound as you go around a corner with the car headed off track. Cars that experience a lot of understeer mid corner and corner exit are slow off the corners. This is because you have to wait to go to full power. Going to full power as early as you can is the key to getting a great run down the straight. This is speed. Speed reduces lap times. Understeering cars inhibit/prohibit a faster exit speed from being acheived. BTW, the correct way to determine if you have understeer is to enter a corner and roll through the corner as quickly as you can with near zero or as little throttle as possible. If your car understeers in these conditions then you probably have a setup that is understeering. Small amounts of understeed can be dialed in or out with a swaybar. Use it. Try it. Swaybars are your friends. Experiment with them and learn something. Or....you can be afraid like most people and never, ever, ever touch them. I'll suggest to everyone that those people who try things are the drivers that learn. Drivers that learn go faster, are safer and can do more with the same car than other drivers. Trust me when I tell you that you can't mess something up that another person can't fix. Come to the track with a plan and execute it. Test days are great for this.
OK. So we've determined that corner XYZ on some track is giving us Understeer. A few things we can do. (a) Drive the corner differently. Wait, wait, wait and then go to full power. If your ability to hit a very late apex is not your strength, chances are your driving style has a TENDANCY to go to full power early. Congrats! You are normal. Most all beginner and intermediate drivers experience this. Consider this an opportunity to improve your driving skill set. (b) you are waiting and waiting and waiting to go to full power, you have slowed your car down to a crawl and when you go to power or full power the car understeers or "pushes" off the track. Symptoms of this are the feeling of running out of room to stay on the track and having to lift off the power to allow the car to point in preferred direction and stay on track. You can do a couple of things to reduce your understeer:
1. Address the front end to reduce Understeer. To reduce understeer at the front end you'll want to soften the front bar. This is done by moving the endlinks (both of them) toward the end of the bar---away from where it mounts. Technically this gives the bar more leverage to twist (kind of like when you use a long handle on a wrench to remove a rusty stubbon nut off of something). This gives the car more front roll. This increases front grip in an understeering situation.
2. Address the rear end to reduct Understeer You can also address this front understeer by (ready for this) addressing the REAR of the car. What? Huh? Yes. You want to DECREASE rear grip (therefore you get more front grip). To do this you stiffen the rear bar. Essentially what your doing is taking rear grip out of the car so the rear end wants to come around a little more in a turn which helps point the car in your desired direction. You get can the same result when you decrease your rear spring rate---the back end of the car will roll over just a tiny bit more, put less weight on the inside tire and slightly overburden the outside tire which will make the rear end of the car want to pivot a little more around the front.
Word of Caution: It takes a very skilled driver to setup a car. You drive a car right up on the edge without excessive throttle or brake inputs and listen to what the car is telling you. This I've found is what distinguishes a very good driver from an average driver. Some drivers can just drive anything they jump into. They are naturally fast. They adapt their style to the car and adjust accordingly. Sometimes they can't tell you what are car is doing. They just say "I dunno, I just drive it as fast as I can". These guys are truly talented. Truely. Other drivers can do the same thing but tell you what the car is doing and where it's doing it. These are very, very, very good drivers. You'll need data acquistion to help discover some of these issues. Perhaps the understeer only occurs in high speed sweepers? Perhaps only in right hand slow corners. Fine tuning suspension is truly a talent. Many racers I know are fast and have little idea on how to articulate what the car is doing. They just drive. Therefore, it is difficult to fine tune your suspension. You can use these same principles to take some large chunks of handling problems out of your cars. Some of you may be able to get to the finer tuning side of things. Go for it. Try it. Don't be afraid to fail.
So what does all of this have to do with endlinks???
Well, endlinks are the connections to your swaybars. If you lower or raise ride height, put on a different spring, change bars, camber, toe you are changing the tension on these endlinks. When you change this tension you are influencing your suspension's mechanics. When you hear the term "preload" this is a PRE-LOADED swaybar. Think about it as backswing in golf thats all loaded up and ready to attack the golf ball. This tension is not at rest when the car is at rest. Not good. So you make a change to your car during setup and forget to dissconnect the bars and you've added preload which may add to more under or oversteer. It can even make the car handle ultra funky by exposing these under/over symptoms in right or left turns only. When this happens most beginner and intermediate driver types start pointing and blaming their shocks, springs, tire or something else that has nothing to do with the actual issue. WHICH IS WHY it is so important to know what your endlinks are doing.
What to do each and everytime you make an adjustment or install new bars, springs, change ride height etc.
1. Dissconnect one of your front and one of your rear endlinks.
2. Make whatever adjustments you want to make. Perhaps lower ride height. Perhaps add more camber. Perhaps you're putting on an entirely new shock and spring package.
3. Reinstall the endlinks WHEN THE CAR IS ON ALL FOURS AND ON A LEVEL SURFACE. Reinstalling the endlinks when the car is jacked up on its side is the same as adding preload. The correct way to do this is to have the cars TIRES on four stands or on a lift where you can get under it. Again, the suspension has to be under it's normal static load with all tires sitting nicely on the ground. Ideally there is someone sitting in the driver's seat to replicate the exact weight that is in the car during your driving event. We like to perform all our setups with a 1/2 tank of fuel and use watersoftener bags of salt in the drivers seat for driver weight.
4. After the links are installed you should be able to hold on to these links and twist them a bit. They should freely move. You should be able to jiggle or rattle them. This would indicate no preload.
Symptoms of preload:
1. No way in hell you can remove your endlinks.
2. Suspension is so bound up that you have to jack up the car, lower the car, discconect the bar because you can't get the endlink bolt out of either the sway bar side or the control arm.
3. When you remove the bar the car makes a serious motion that scares the crap out of you and you think about all the times your mom said "you'll poke an eye out". That would be MAJOR preload. This also means that your car was whacked big time. F'd up yo schizzle dizzle.
So.......Do some winter maintenance. Take your end links off and make sure the threads are free and the nuts can move and can be easily shortened or lengthened. Make sure the little spherial round shiney ball bearing looking thing with the hole in it can more freely. If it doesn't, try some grease. If it still doesn't move throw it away and get another one.
Something else you may want to try with a friend is this: Increase or decrease your ride height and see if your links have enough length and/or can be shortened. Easy to do with adjustable collar coilover suspenion. All you need to do is make a dramatic height adjustment with the shock collars. Take 5 or 6 turns (all up or all down) all the way around. Your goal is to really lower the car and then to really raise the car. Make sure the end links are first dissconnected. Also make sure that when you turn your height adjustment collars you are actually lowering or raising the car.
Now reconnect the bars. Notice how the links need adjustment now? Make the adjustment. Once again, these need to freely move or have the ability to jiggle when connected. All 4 of them.
Now go the other way (car is low or car is high). Do you have enough endlink adjustment to do this? If not then you should think about getting some end links that have more adjustment.
Several links that I've seen on the market will not SHORTEN enough. If you have these and are running a ride height where you have to jack the car to install them then you've got problems. We make our own now. You'll want to figure out if those neat little buggers that people buy because they're cheap and they think they do something magical ACTUALLY FIT AND WORK!
Hopefully this has helped some of you understand the proper use of endlinks.
Happy Rotoring.
BTW, We are headed to the NASA Road Atlanta December event. I have 3 RX8's in the shop and none of them have a motor installed. Building new cars for 2010 and beyond. Jason Andrew and I will be driving with Tom Neel. Tom owns the www.partsgroup.com and has a silver RX8. If you're in the area---stop on by.
Meyer out
Pics of of our 2 rotor 13b NA RX-8 w/Approx 300 flywheel hp here: www.meyer-motorsports.com Should be a killer zoom zoomer.
Last edited by EricMeyer; 11-21-2009 at 06:52 AM.
11-20-2009, 02:15 PM
#10
Good post Eric.....Most of the endlinks out there are way too long on a lowered car. The stock ones are marginal with any more than about 1/2" drop and are non-adjustable anyway
A couple of the aftermarket ones I have seen are way too long the way they come
Custom ones are easy to make...just need to buy good Heim fittings and the correct length centers...and you should be good to go
You guys should make some and sell them
There really is a market for decent ones
Folks...I think the big message here is they need to be adjustable to prevent binding...and they should be passive when you put them in...if not they are not acting as a sway bar...but as a stiffer spring...that moves around erratically with car dynamics....and that isn't something you want to try and tune
A couple of the aftermarket ones I have seen are way too long the way they come
Custom ones are easy to make...just need to buy good Heim fittings and the correct length centers...and you should be good to go
You guys should make some and sell them
There really is a market for decent onesFolks...I think the big message here is they need to be adjustable to prevent binding...and they should be passive when you put them in...if not they are not acting as a sway bar...but as a stiffer spring...that moves around erratically with car dynamics....and that isn't something you want to try and tune
11-20-2009, 05:35 PM
#11
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2. You can also address this front understeer by (ready for this) addressing the REAR of the car. What? Huh? Yes. You want to DECREASE rear grip (therefore you get more front grip). To do this you soften the rear bar. You could even dissconnect it altogether. Essentially what your doing is taking rear grip out of the car so the rear end wants to come around a little more in a turn which helps point the car in your desired direction. You can the same result when you decrease your rear spring rate---the back end of the car will step out just a tiny, tiny bit.
11-21-2009, 06:54 AM
#12
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Whoops. Fellow Forum Spell/content checkers to the rescue. Ajustments made. Thank you sincerely.
FWIW, we don't use a rear bar. We use a really, really, really stiff front bar and tune the car with rear spring changes. The rear springs on our Koni shocks are actually faster to access and change then the front or rear bars.
11-21-2009, 07:00 AM
#13
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http://gallery.me.com/meyermotorspor...&bgcolor=black
Remove bolt that holds the rear shock on.
Slide the black lower spring perch collar off.
Springs slips down and right over the lower shock assembly
Add new spring
Add perch
Reinstall bolt
Go rip.
Our setup USE to be:
Speedsource front bar, MSpeed rear bar 750 front, 600 rear
Speedsource front bar stiff, no rear bar, 600F, 500r
Bigger Speedway front bar, no rear, 550F, 450 r
Bigger Speedway #2, 500F, 400R
We have a bigger one yet again but have not tested.
Pictures of quick release links for rain (and adjustment) on the way
Remove bolt that holds the rear shock on.
Slide the black lower spring perch collar off.
Springs slips down and right over the lower shock assembly
Add new spring
Add perch
Reinstall bolt
Go rip.
Our setup USE to be:
Speedsource front bar, MSpeed rear bar 750 front, 600 rear
Speedsource front bar stiff, no rear bar, 600F, 500r
Bigger Speedway front bar, no rear, 550F, 450 r
Bigger Speedway #2, 500F, 400R
We have a bigger one yet again but have not tested.
Pictures of quick release links for rain (and adjustment) on the way
11-21-2009, 08:21 AM
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If you seach you will fin people that have bent front and back oem endlinks. Dont know if they put out tsb yet but if your sticking with stock you might want to check on your front and rear endlinks every time you hit a bump pot hole or pack your 8 with 4 people. GL
11-21-2009, 10:54 AM
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. I don't particularly know what I'm doing when it comes to setting up my suspension let alone finding ways to tweak it that won't get masked by my own improving driving skills (I'm a little over a second off the pace, sometimes as much as 2 seconds depending on how the course is setup but that's behind National level drivers in their setup cars... so I don't feel too bad, but have to compete with them locally anyway...) so the more brain dumps I get from him the more information I have to attempt to use to explain what I feel when driving. I still end up on google once or twice for every post he makes, but I don't think he's written one of those monster posts yet that hasn't been useful.Actually reminds me a lot of a GT2 racer at work whose on the driving enthusiasts email lists. His responses are almost universally useful so I actually have an email rule to copy them off for further inspection
11-22-2009, 06:51 PM
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I was looking over my factory endlinks this weekend with all four wheels on the ground (my car has koni sports which produce a ~1/2" drop on these cars). The fronts look fine, the rears look "iffy" at best. Looks like I'll need adjustable endlinks on the rear of the car before the front.
11-22-2009, 08:44 PM
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[quote=EricMeyer;3325500]FWIW, we don't use a rear bar. We use a really, really, really stiff front bar... quote]
101: Really Stiff Front Bar - ok help me out. This is the second car I am starting to learn suspension changes on for HPDE. The first car also was reported to need a big front bar (E36 M3). Before I did that I got the car nice and neutral thru camber changes (significantly more front than rear). Then I put on the big front bar - understeer. I wrote it off to me not lowering the car much meaning I thought I had better geometry by not lowering it much.
Now I am on to my second toy, a 2004 RX-8. This car is stiffer than my M3 and more neutral out of the box. I was thinking all I need is some good tires and i will be ready to go. Then i read I need a big front sway bar.
The school bell rings.....
101: Really Stiff Front Bar - ok help me out. This is the second car I am starting to learn suspension changes on for HPDE. The first car also was reported to need a big front bar (E36 M3). Before I did that I got the car nice and neutral thru camber changes (significantly more front than rear). Then I put on the big front bar - understeer. I wrote it off to me not lowering the car much meaning I thought I had better geometry by not lowering it much.
Now I am on to my second toy, a 2004 RX-8. This car is stiffer than my M3 and more neutral out of the box. I was thinking all I need is some good tires and i will be ready to go. Then i read I need a big front sway bar.
The school bell rings.....
11-22-2009, 10:41 PM
#21
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I think Eric's really stiff front bar (with no rear bar) is entirely because it is faster to get the balance needed at a give track with that set of track conditions by rear spring and shock changes. So they can get it anywhere from loose to really tight with spring and shock choices on the rear, but can leave the front alone when they are actually at the track.
I don't know that I would take that exact same methodology for personal use, even at the track, unless I ended up with enough money for tons of different bars, spring sets, and shock sets to play with each variant on a single track weekend, and then time would still have to be the only critical factor in choice. Not being in a professional and competitive series changes the game quite a bit.
I don't know that I would take that exact same methodology for personal use, even at the track, unless I ended up with enough money for tons of different bars, spring sets, and shock sets to play with each variant on a single track weekend, and then time would still have to be the only critical factor in choice. Not being in a professional and competitive series changes the game quite a bit.
Last edited by RIWWP; 11-22-2009 at 10:43 PM.
11-23-2009, 11:29 AM
#22
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Picture a spring that only works when a car leans, and you have a swaybar.
In a straight line, they don't do much. Single wheel bumps work the swaybar slightly, but overall the main springs take care of almost everything in this case.
Under high lean conditions (a sweeper for example) one side of the suspension is being pushed up, while the other is in droop. That loads the swaybar to resist the roll. Essentially the spring rate for that outer corner goes up.
That's why you got push on the BMW - adding a front bar raised the front spring rate under side load conditions. If you didn't do anything to balance the rear, the net result is the push you described.
I'm pretty sure the E36 has a very limited amount of front camber, and is a pretty tippy car. Reducing the body lean with the front bar probably would net a lot bigger available contact patch (and much less worn outer front tire edges) with the correct tuning.
In my experience with other chassis, sways make the biggest difference in transition moves. Cars tend to take a set much quicker. I'm not sure what the negative effect of too much bar would be, does anyone know?
In a straight line, they don't do much. Single wheel bumps work the swaybar slightly, but overall the main springs take care of almost everything in this case.
Under high lean conditions (a sweeper for example) one side of the suspension is being pushed up, while the other is in droop. That loads the swaybar to resist the roll. Essentially the spring rate for that outer corner goes up.
That's why you got push on the BMW - adding a front bar raised the front spring rate under side load conditions. If you didn't do anything to balance the rear, the net result is the push you described.
I'm pretty sure the E36 has a very limited amount of front camber, and is a pretty tippy car. Reducing the body lean with the front bar probably would net a lot bigger available contact patch (and much less worn outer front tire edges) with the correct tuning.
In my experience with other chassis, sways make the biggest difference in transition moves. Cars tend to take a set much quicker. I'm not sure what the negative effect of too much bar would be, does anyone know?
11-24-2009, 05:47 AM
#25
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Once again he is right on the money---Miata links are plentiful and inexpensive.
