Stiff Front Sway Bar Thoughts

SeeThruHead

I always come back to this thread when trying to understand sway bar stiffness on the Z.

I found this today that seems directly related to the conversation.


From the pages of High Performance Handling Handbook by Don Alexander:

"There are situations where increasing the stiffness of an anti-roll bar will have the opposite effect. Most stock vehicles have excessive understeer because it is easier to control and provides more stability for the average driver than a vehicle that oversteers. A big part of this comes from excessive body roll, which induces too much camber change, and a good portion of the front tire contact patches loses contact with the road.
In this instance, adding a stiffer front anti-roll bar, which would typically increase the extreme understeer, actually reduces the understeer by reducing the body roll-induced camber change. The front tires now stay in better contact with the road surface, creating more traction and reducing understeer."

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Averying

Good find!! I’m a nerd for learning more about suspension geometry and race car chassis setups so I love this stuff.

Found the post that explains this well. j-rho explains it better than me. See his post here: Auto-X street - no rear sway

It’s not that a front bar gives more grip… a stiffer bar actually asks MORE of the outside loaded tires… but the tire is kept in a better range of the camber curve which outweighs the increased load, and therefore more grip!

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