Front Sway bars
 

Just curious to see how many RX8 drivers where using the stock front sway bar at nationals this year? And/or if you where using the stock bar but modified it to be a little stiffer?

Not that it would help my driving or use of old tires.

Stock bar with an extra hole on each side, pretty minimal rate increase I'd imagine.

do you think the extra hole is worth it? have thought about doing that change but haven't yet

Hard to say, the difference in rate is so small that my butt meter has a hard time picking it up. The extra holes definitely introduce some interference between the stock end link and the shock body at full droop, not sure if that negatively impacts anything.



It is a CHEAP modification, and if anything it makes the bar lighter, right :)

true ;) I weighed in at 2816 on thursday. got to get closer to jasons 2797.

I hear Carter was 10 lbs under me.... And that is weight without driver. :uhh:

Christ. We were at 2810, I thought that was good...

Carter has the TeamRX8 bar, Edj has one too with the holes slightly off on the stiffer side

FWIW, the car that Saini drove to a dirty 47.6 on the west course had an undrilled stock front bar.

We use the Mazdaspeed bar.

East course we ran the 27mm solid Whiteline bar (car was second fastest)
West course we ran a drilled stock bar at it's stiffest (car was third fastest)
At home, I've run the stock bar.
I've also run the stock bar at its "middle" setting.

I can't tell the difference, except at Atwater where the big bar caused lots of push...but that is a surface that promotes understeer. Well, that's not exactly true, the car slaloms flatter (quicker??) with the big bar.

In other words, like tires, it probably comes down to personal preference and driving ability, in terms of what is "fastest" :lol2:

I think we were at 2835...how can there be so much variance, besides the extra heavy crankshaft in the later cars? ;)

Seriously, we are talking about a significant difference for "identical" cars...I can't remember if we weighed on the OZ's or lighter SSR's, but that would, at most, account for 10lbs. of the variance...

and 6.2 lb/gal depending on the fuel variance

OZ's, if they were on. Big @ss solid front bar. Fuel level.

I had the low fuel light on.

The car was weighed with the stock bar, pretty sure with the SSR's, but we were consistently running with at least 1/4 tank of gas, so there's 15-20lbs, easy.

Still, I can't see any way that my car could run below 2800lbs. :dunno:

On the other hand, when they did the "official" camber measurement (with wheels pointed every which way and a half a degree squish factor lol), we DID get -2.2 :lol2:

Every other time we have weighed our car is has been within 5 lbs of 2830. Not sure how we got so light at natls.

the obvious answer is the scale calibration

Same scale?

I dunno, maybe Matthew was still in the car...:lol2:

Those measurements were off. We got 2.1 per the gauge, but we get 1.6 on a calibrated rack with my 200-lb ass in the driver's seat.

Did you take out your spare tire? It is mounted under the back seat in the 06'. :rolleyes:

OK... The truth is I have found without a co-driver I can run with no coolant, saves a lot of weight.

Yeah, that's why I made the "half a degree squish factor" comment. My car does -1.7 on the calibrated rack at Custom Alignment of Mt. View.

I think most people are treating the camber and weighing stuff as kind of a half assed joke...:)

This is where the real savings was at: http://gopurepower.com/ :)

Hydrogen gas in the balloon-sized tires explains why Carter was lighter :cwm27:

seems like most people saw lower weight readings than normal, that's why I question the scale calibration

:SHOCKED:

Figure that the scales are out of cal as the last I wieghed my car it had just over 1/4 tank and stock muffler compared to Topeka where I was just under 1/4 tank (maybe 1-2 gal difference) and no muffler just the pipe that connects to it.

The camber was odd to me also as I know the last alignment had me at -1.2 with least amount of caster and the guy said I was sitting at -1.9. I did notice that I had the biggest tire to fender gap there though :scared:

Was curious to see how many different FSB choices there where at the nats this year. Had been thinking about modifying the stock bar as I can't see spending the money on the mazdaspeed bar

I prefer the stock bar on my Tokico-car, but at Nats in Joe's Koni car I liked the drilled stock bar better. Not sure if it's a subtle difference in our alignments, or if the front/rear shock balance differs between Koni & Tokico. Also, Joe had aftermarket endlinks - perhaps my stock endlinks are binding and adding front stiffness. Dunno.

IMO there's no advantage to using heim joints over the OE end links unless for some reason the bar is being preloaded. There is usually enough slack between the mounting holes on both ends to avoid this unless something is tweaked/bent