I recently purchased and installed H&R sway bars (wished I had opted for the lighter, better-optioned Hotchkis, but oh well) which only offer 2-position adjustments on the front and rear bars. Because I did not research enough, initially, I set the stiffest adjustment on the front and kept the rear bar set at the minimum adjustment. Notably, understeer is now much more pronounced than it was even over the OEM setup. I want to minimize my understeer and/or find a good balance between understeer/oversteer.
So, my question is, which adjustment should I make next to it?
1. Reduce the stiffness on the front sway bar only.
2. Increase the stiffness on the rear sway bar and leave the front sway bar unchanged.
3. Reduce the stiffness on the front sway bar and increase the stiffness on the rear sway bar.

I'm thinking that I will most likely increase the stiffness on the rear sway bar and leave the front sway bar unchanged to see if it reduces the understeer (body roll is pretty much non-existent now with the current setup.)

 

If it were mine, I would first try the front also on the soft setting. Most sway bars (I don't have first hand experience with H&R) are significantly stiffer than stock on their softest setting. And on the stiffest setting they are to stiff for street tires, because their isn't enough grip to utilize the stiffness of the suspension.

If the car still understeers more than you would like, then leave the Front on soft and the rear on stiff, but beware that could case it to be a little tail happy and oversteer.


-Rob

 

So, yesterday, I stiffened the rear sway bars and left the front swaybars at the stiffest setting. Understeer is mostly returned back to stock feel, so in the next couple of weeks, I may reduce the stiffness on the front sway bars to see if that makes any noticeable difference.

And to your point, I had been reading about the stiffness settings on the Hotchkis front sway bars. I can't imagine anyone trying to go higher than the lowest setting on the front swaybars.

 

sounds like the H&R swaybars did you right then ?

 

It all depends on how much traction you have, like I said before the wider/stickier your tires the stiffer you can go.

-Rob

 

How true. On my 08 350Z I recently switched to 245/40s on 9.5" width rims FRONT and 275/40s on the SAME width rims REAR. I also have tanabe rear sway bar which is around 20% stiffer (front is stock bar). Car handles great, but I do get the tail comming out (snaping out!) on throttle in a turn...OVERSTEER. This is because the FRONTS are now much stickier relative to the rears. I'm going to order the H&R FRONT bar and set it on the softer setting..which should still be 20% stiffer than stock. This FRONT bar is SOLID and 36MM.The stock bar is 34MM and tubular so the H&R is a very stiff bar! The stiffer setting is prolly 40% stiffer than stock.

***BTW, this is compared to UPDATED..04.5+ suspensions! Many bars are still being compared to the OLDER front bar specs which are 17% SOFTER in the FRONT!

 

You should probably also reduce the front bar as well..that's what I would have done first.... leave the rear stiffer for now and reduce the front. If you're into oversteer, then reduce the rear as well. This is a VERY stiff bar..especially if you have stock size tires and rims.