That's the fun part, feeling like you can dance with the car. When a car
is oversprung and not handling right you just can't do that. Peyote's
big secret is how well it dances.
If someone wants to get their car to handle well they need to start with
the basics. Deciding on sway bars or springs is about the last step, not
the first. You need to know what your suspension is doing before you
start taking corrective action. Yes, you can get it to behave to some
degree by clamping everything down, but you'll wind up deep in the
unpleasant side effects of the corrections, with a car that needs to be
"dirt tracked".
Remember that a sway bar going in a straight line isn't supposed to do
anything--but it does. Roads and tracks are bumpy and the wheels are
never reacting to the road surface in the same way, so most of the time
a sway bar is a spring that prevents your wheel from rolling compliantly
over a bump, and it's a spring that can suddenly go away when the other
wheel reacts to a bump. It's a corrective compromise, not a cure.
If you're going to run totally stock front suspension you simply need to
work with what you've got, but your car will handle better to start with
if you get the roll centers tuned up, and mostly that means get your
roll center in the front to come up above the pavement. Some of the
things we do to change camber will help that (moving the upper inboard
pivot point inwards), while some approaches (shortening the upper arm)
push the roll center deeper.
Not all that hard a thing to measure--find the height of your inner and
outer, upper and lower suspension pivot points at normal road height.
Measure the length of your suspension arms. Graph them at one inch to
the foot on a piece of paper then draw lines through the centerlines of
the suspension arms. The point where they intersect is the roll center,
measured in relation to the pavement. The roll center moves as the
suspension operates for most independent suspension designs.
With this graph it's easy to determine the effect of a suspension
modification on roll center.
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-fot@autox.team.net [mailto:owner-fot@autox.team.net] On
Behalf Of SHANE Ingate
Sent: Wednesday, October 25, 2006 7:30 AM
To: vintage.racer@comcast.net
Cc: fot@autox.team.net
Subject: RE: [FOT] Sway Bars
Gary,
I was extremely happy (bug-eating-grin happy) and confident with my
adjustable 5/8" solid bar on the rear and 1" hollow bar on the front
which invited very neutral and balanced handling that was easily
modulated either way with just the throttle. This was on a mostly-stock
TR6 with a Salisbury LSD. Spring rates were 420 lbs/in.
When Rags gets back on the road sans 400 lbs, a cage, and 80 extra
ponies, all that may change.
Shane Ingate in Maryland
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