Bud M

Hmm...that makes sense. It never occured to me. How significant is the angle change as the suspension extends/compresses?

Injuneer

Depends on the exact layout of the unequal A-arms..... you would need a 4-link analyzer to plot the angle the steering knuckle made to the ground as the body rotated. This little graphic emphasizes the erratic movement, that can actually produce negative or positive camber as the wheel moves through its extremes.

http://www.miracerros.com/mustang/t_animate_a.gif

Copy & paste to view.

It's been years since I played with front and rear sway bars for street use. I was always under the impression that you had to maintain a relative "balance" between the front and the rear bar. Too small a rear bar relative to the front, and the car understeers. Go too large on the rear bar and the car will start to oversteer. I think that's the way I remember it, but it could be wrong.

I've driven my friends 30th SS with no front sway bar, and a stock rear bar, and it felt "loose". It also showed evidence of extreme body roll, when the rear inner fender panels cut into the sidewall of the tires. For 4 years with the stock front sway bar, that had never happened.

I guess I need to put my street wheels/tires on, and take my car out for a little street "cornering". I have no front bar at all, and the Spohn 35mm solid chrome moly "drag" bar in the rear. That should make for some interesting handling. I just don't street drive the car any more.... it only has to manage the single turn at the end of the 1/4-mile that gets me back to the return road.....

Sam Strano

Taking of the front swaybar is IMHO an insane move for a street driven car, even if you say "I don't drive hard on the street" First, if that was true, I doubt you'd be on this board. Second, while you might live with it just tooling around, you'll be in a world of crap the first time you need to pull an evasive maneuver.........

Injuneer

Amen!

Red96Lt1

Why does !swaybar help for dragracing. Is it just the weight issue or something that the swaybar actually does with the suspension?

Injuneer

Its a mixed bag on drag racing.... you want to lift the front wheels, and in reaction to the torque at the rear wheels, the left front corner of the car wants to come up, but it can't because the front sway bar prevents large differences in movement between the left and right sides. But that's only for relativel moderate HP cars.

When the HP goes up, you want to keep the car level, to prevent the right rear side from squatting. An airbag can help up to a reasonable HP, and then even that doesn't work. Then you go to the mega-rear swaybar like the Wolfe or the Spohn. That allows you to preload the rear suspension, so that in repsonse to the rear wheel torque and the driveshaft torque, the suspension levels perfectly and sends you straight down the track - very important when the front wheels aren't touching the track, and you can't correct a car that is heading for the wall.

This is a perfect launch in my mind.... just pulling the fornt wheels far enough off the ground to insure that all the weight is on the rear wheels......

http://cjcfo.fbody.com/members/injun...B/IMG_0710.jpg

Note that the car is perfectly level, the rear of the body has actually "lifted" forceing the wheels down even harder on the track. That's a 1.31 60-ft.