Anti-sway, roll bar manufacturers?

[Ron Earp]

Somewhere on this computer is a simple program to calculate the "stiffness" of a bar so you can work out what you have been using and what you need to replace it with to get the same or stiffer bar. I will post it when I find it!

Have you found it?

I want to go ahead and get some bars ordered up, but, not sure where to start on "stiffness". Any RCR owners out there with roll bars that have an idea of rate that is added by use of the bar? If so, what sort of design did you use and what company?

The front the bar can tie into the cage mounting plates that go through the chassis and are backed by a plate of the same size. The attachement points should be plenty strong. But, I think the rear bar will be a bear to make as there seems to be no left to right crossing at the rear that is entirely straight, or, even close to straight. I'll have to look at that a bit.

 

[Terry Oxandale]

To throw a little more into this, I found a very nice sway bar on the old Dodge Ram vans. 1" in diameter, a very nearly straight center section (was made perfectly straight in the press after this photo), and the arms are over 1 foot long and spaced almost perfect at the ends for connection to the uprights....$20

 

[EGLITOM]

Ron

here you go

TOM

 

[DARREN]

In theory you don't need an anti roll bar on a car as the main suspension springs can be rated to perform the same job.

The down side of having an anti-roll bar on the rear of a car (especially one with an open diff) is that they have a detrimental effect on the amount of power you can put down on the road as the roll bar effectively tries to lift the inner tyre off the road during roll.

Big antiroll bars are obviously heavy, add to the unsprung mass of the corner and transfer a lot of weight from one side of the car to the other.

Therefore on racing cars it's often considered a good idea to run a very small anti-roll bar on the front only. If it's adjustable then you can use it to adjust the balance of the car. It's considered preferable to rate the main springs to control the roll and turn in characteristics of the car.

The reverse argument being that stiff main springs contribute to stiff ride and anti-roll bars can provide a compromise. I think this is true to a degree, but, this theory does require that the bumps the cars see's act evenly across each axle to avoid the anti-roll bar twisting and giving the chassis an input.

In my racing experience and many 4 post rig development tests small anti-roll bars and stiffer main springs that are well controlled by the shocks is the way to go. Good shocks with the correct low speed damping characteristics is mega important to road and race cars, but the characteristics are very different between road and race. Very few of the shocks that we tend to use in these types of cars give us a good characteristic for either use.

D.