I'm thinking about getting swaybars with my tax return money

Just a few questions I'd like answers to first:

1) My car is stock height with stock springs/shocks, will I notice a difference in body roll and cornering ability?

2) What sizes would be good for everyday street driving? I don't autocross or plan to in the future. I may make a few runs down the strip occasionally. I'm just trying to make a "fun to play around with" daily driver.

3) How hard are they to install? I have some mechanical ability and did everything in my sig except the exhaust myself.

Thanks

 

I just ordered the Sam Strano hollow 35mm front and 22mm rear swaybars. Reasonably priced and Strano stuff is highly recommended on the board. 379 a pair.
?1 = Yes

 

thanks!

anyone else have any thoughts?

 

I've been looking around online in several other forums about the Strano bars. When are these expected to be ready to ship? Anyone know?

 

You would probably better spend your money, at this point, on better springs and shocks.

JMHO

 

Definitely want some new shocks. The stock Decarbons are crap, plain and simple. Springs swap at the same time is usually good to avoid any extra effort involved in doing them down the road (front springs/shocks are not something you want to dig into any more than you have to) I personally wanted to keep the stock springs for a slightly softer ride on the street.

Shocks, minimum bilsteins. Good shocks, good price, make the decarbons look like kiddy toys.

I got the ST 35mm front sway, which is a solid 35mm bar, not a hollow bar. I wouldn't want it any other way now. The bar has zero affect on ride quality, but does a great job of keeping body roll in check. Interesting side affect... I had gotten pretty good at powerslides with the stock suspension, but after the koni/swaybar install it just became a piece of cake. The car is so much more predictable (and thus controllable). I can pretty much kick the rear out at will, hold it, or bring it back in line without any jerking or overcompensating. There is one negative to that. My rear tires have an even shorter life then they already had, and I've gotta get an aftermarket diff cause right hand turns are really ticking me off lately.

 

the strano stuff should be in stock in two weeks and then it'll be ready to be sent out.
Talking to arlyn at Strano yesterday, she said that Sam used to run stock springs with new shocks. If you like the ride quality and height, upgrade shocks and swaybars. My .02

 

Will changing shocks not affect my ride height? I want to keep factory ride height (SLP LTs) with whatever I do. How will bilsteins affect my 1/4mile time? I know they are not drag shocks, but do they help? hurt?
How much would I be looking at spending to do shocks?
What advantages exactly do they offer over stock? ("make the decarbons look like kiddy toys." how so?)

 

sub frame connectors & lower control arms might benifit you more! some even remove their front sway (i haven't) bar for better et's. i think the sway bar upgarde mod would be more for serious autocrossing! (IMO) i got hal/qa1 shocks and front springs and love 'em but did lower the car a little!

 

lower control arms already installed, subframe connectors ready to go in.. (in sig)

 

Shocks will have no effect on ride height. Your springs are what control the height at which the car will sit at equilibrium. The actual height is determined by the spring rate of each individual spring. Shocks simply serve as "dampers" in the system.

In theory (and neglecting things like friction, etc.) you could remove the shocks from a car altogether and it would sit just the same without them as with them (again in theory so lets pretend no struts are being used ). If you had no shocks and you pushed down on the bumper and let go the car would oscillate up and down continually without stopping. With the shocks installed, however, the oscillation will decay until it stops altogether. The amount of dampening designed into the shock will determine how fast the oscillation decays.

 

A hollow swaybar is not any less effective than a solid one. It works just the same. In fact it's actually better, because it weighs less. They use hollow sawybars in racing and have been for a long time. I really don't care what the dealer or maker said. They're lying their butts off on that one. It would be cheaper for them to bend a solid piece of bar stock than to go to the expense of getting quality tubing and bending it correctly and making sure that the diameter on the bends is the same as the rest of the bar. Then there's the need to have it properly heat treated. So a solid one is used because it's cheaper for the maker, not because it's superior.

 

^ That would depend on what you are considering effective here. If by effective you mean it's ability to reduce body roll, then that statement is just plain false. The effectiveness of a swaybar, ie it's ability to reduce body roll, is primarily based on the torsional rigidity of the bar. Cross sectional area of the bar is just as important as the diameter of the bar. Two bars of the same material built under the same process and being of equal diameter, the one with more cross sectional area is going to have higher torsional rigidity, meaning it's also going to resist roll to a greater extent.

Now, naturally it's all about balance. You can indeed have a swaybar that is too stiff, just as you can have one that is too soft. The material the bar is made of will affect it's torsional rigidity as well. Some metals just flex and twist easier than others. Iron has a very high resistance to distortion compared to Steel (the carbon in the steel gives it more flexibility, maleability).

Perhaps it was a bit inappropriate to infer that solid bars were indeed superior to hollow bars. It's a little bit more complicated than that. However, it is a simple fact of physics that, all other things being equal, a solid bar will reduce body roll more than a hollow bar. It is entirely possible that the hollow bars are made from a different, more rigid material, but that would be the reason they were more rigid, not the fact that they are hollow vs solid.

Now, if you want to talk about their effectiveness on a per pound basis, having two same weight bars, one small diameter solid bar vs one larger diameter hollow bar, the hollow bar will be superior.

With stock springs though, I wanted the most body roll reduction I could get out of the swaybar. At the time I bought the bar, there was no 35mm hollow bar available at all. Even now that there is, I doubt I would still go with the hollow bar because in all likelihood my bar still provides greater resistance to body roll. The solid bar may be too much with higher rate aftermarket springs. You can make the suspension so rigid that the tires just skate over the pavement going into a corner instead of digging in and turning. Stiffer isn't necessarily better, isn't necessarily more or less effective. It's just stiffer.

 

It's been common knowledge in racing and has been for years, that the center portion of a solid swaybar contributes nothing to the equation but weight. Proper material selection and heat treating are what counts. A hollow bar when properly constructed is more effective than a solid piece in stiffness and weight reduction. When it's mounted in split aluminum blocks, it really shines. When it's too stiff and you lift the wheel off the ground during turning, that's called too much roll stiffness. So spare me the mumbo jumbo.

 

I'd like to ammend my original statement, and not exactly in my favor. While technically a solid bar all else equal will have higher torsional rigidity over a hollow bar, the majority of any rigidity comes from the outer 20-25% of the bars diameter. Outside of a true thin-wall bar, the differences between the two are minor. Whether they're negligible or not would be a guess on my part, but the differences would potentially be unnoticable outside of strict timed handling tests.

 

I said essentially the same thing in my second paragraph.

 

It was an assy intro remark, and it was out of line. I've hit the "EDIT" button.

 

so anyways....

How will bilsteins affect my 1/4mile time? I know they are not drag shocks, but do they help? hurt?

How much would I be looking at spending to do shocks?

What advantages exactly do they offer over stock? ("make the decarbons look like kiddy toys." how so?)