slc sway bars

[mahlon]

I am finally able to work on our slc again with hopes of finishing it up. I have Frans stock sway bars which I will not use, I will make them available if someone wants to use them at a fire sale price. we use speedway engineering bars which give us great ability to fine tune the chassis, my question is who is running sway bars on there slc and do they think they benefit from them. The front is an easy set up, the back not as much but I believe I have a good way to do it any input would be greatly appreciated

 

[Howard Jones]

It completely is determined by how you intend to use the car. For street only use (no matter how hard you intend to drive on the public road) I would not put them on the car. These cars have so much grip even with a high end summer only street tire that I would personally feel that it is nearing irresponsibility to push them to the limit on the street. Just get the spring rates and shock dampening correct and I think you would be very happy, even without anti roll bars.

Even with some track use on summer only street tires I would think You would still be hard pressed to need anti roll bars to have a good time.

Hoosiers or other slicks: Yes, and you will be changing string rates also. At least up to 800lb/in F and 1000lbs rear. Dampening settings will be much different also and all this will be track specific.

At the front I would only add that whatever you settle on try and get arm length to at least 8 inches with nice wide bars so as to provide a good baseline values to calculate bar diameter with. A really short arm can get extremely sensitive to very small changes. A nice wide tuning range using arm length is what you are going for without changing the bar diameter.

The rear doesn't have the packaging restrictions that the front has but I think driving the ARB arms from the bell cranks seams to be the method of choice on the race cars as well as my solution also.

 

[Mesa]

I tend to agree with Howard on this. For a street car they are not really needed unless that car also sees track duty. IMO the front bar is much harder to make a place to fit it vs. the rear, which is relatively easy (see Howard's build log). Where they do come in handy for a street car is in tuning the balance vs. having to sort through pile of springs to get the preferred (and not easily altered) balance.

 

[mahlon]

Thanks for your responses, I am on the right track [no pun intended] I will be using speedway engineering bars like I normally do and will start on the soft side for fine tuning. Thanks Howard for the information, I had come up with those points for mounting not a lot of room on the back, the front is more straight forward just harder to keep my arms at the proper lengths and angles.

 

[mahlon]

Howard it seems you have put a lot of time with yours on the track, are you suspension alignment specs in your build log? I followed it but don't remember. I remember you talking about increasing your spring rates due to compression at higher speeds but don't remember if you scaled the car or any of that. I am planning on tracking the car so for me that does mean slicks, but at this time I doubt I will due fender to fender competition with it. I get my fix for now vintage racing but who knows. I will glance back threw your build log

 

[Scott]

The front sway bar can be easily mounted to the top of the foot box if you haven't mounted anything there yet. This is how it was mounted on the national championship car. I've since changed my sway bar because I fabricated a nose frame which mounts in that location.

 

[mahlon]

Thanks for the picture Scott. my intent is to mount it further away [forward from the foot box] so I can get a better angle to the control arm. We have always used speedways arms and bars and the rating of the bars is pretty simple with twist of the bar to length of the arm from the axis in inches for lbs. I wont be at 90 degrees on the front, but it works for my simple mind and allows me a baseline.

 

[Ed Davis]

Another way

 

[Howard Jones]

I'm currently at -1.75 degrees on the F and -1.5 R. The grip seams to remain constant as the load goes up from turn in to exit. I think that is how it is suppose to work if the tire contact patch maintains a equal load across its face during the corner. So I think I am close on camber.

Spring rates are F650 and R850. The next move will be to put the rears on the front and go to 1000R. I am at about 65-75 % max damping with the shock settings. That will need more rebound at least as the springs go up I would think. Still learning what the car likes but it does feel pretty predictable. Then again I am a armature driver in his mid 60s so I am somewhat proficiency limited.

I have a tire temp gauge so all I need is a good reliable day with somewhat warm weather and I can get some readings. That will tell me a lot.

 

[Howard Jones]

My front bar is around post number 576 and the rear bar is about #580 on my build log.