whats the cons on putting sway bars front and rear on stock suspensions....

 

none. i have them on my car. it's an awesome mod.

 

Can only enhance your suspension bro...

 

Avoid the trap off stiffening the front too much negating all the good work done on the rear.

Unfortunately sway bars are not considered in shock stiffness criteria, too stiff a sway bar is like too stiff springs [in sways/cornering]........but incedental [in shock life]since most driving is straight ahead.

Avoid rear bars which are stiffer than 50% of spring stiffness [corrected for motion ratio].

 

other than that,sways will cost you money and it most likely add more weights.

 

I'm installing my Stillen Sways today. Whoever says that they are a waste of money seems to not care about handling. The sways are stiffer than factory, when matched with the Prothane Bushings, will help reduce body roll in turns.

 

Q45tech - can you elaborate on this a bit more?

I have the 350evo sways. The rear (from what I understand) has the following settings from soft to stiff: 378, 490, 607 while stock is 385. I think these are lbs/in. Do these numbers need to beconverted to a wheel rate to compare to the rear springs?

If you don't want to get into wheel rates, here is my bottom line question: is the 350evo stiffest setting >50% of the rear spring stiffness?

 

You can get a calculator and do stock x1.5 that's 50% great than stock.

imho, i would be more concerned about the endlinks breaking at
the stiffest setting.

 

it the only con i can think of is it makes your suspension a lil bit more stiffer.

 

thanx for all the good info guys! i was thinking about setting the front and rear at medium stiffness.

 

Yep, but only when you turn. has no effect while going straight...that's
why you don't want to set it too stiff vs your springs/struts because
you want to be able to smoothly transition the lateral load back onto your
springs/struts after a turn. when there is too much difference between your
stiff swaybar rate and springs/struts, the swaybars overpower the
springs/struts when your car finishes the turn and the center of gravity
gets bounced back left/right until it gets damped by the struts and shocks.
it's quite unsettling especially on soft struts/shocks.

 

Well We swapped the front Sway bar because a monster rainstorm was coming (and it was hot as living hell too) and I can notice a CONSIDERABLE difference in turning and quick sudden lane changes versus before. For those keeping score at home, I set it to the Medium setting.

 

Not sure I understand what you are saying here. Q45 is talking about comparing torsional resistance of the sway bars to rear spring resistance. Somehow you need to get these normalized (i.e. wheel rate) to really compare them. What are you multiplying by 1.5?

If you choose the stiffest setting in the rear, you are at 58% over stock. I can't imagine that would break the end links! There are sway bars that claim to be much stiffer than the 350evos and I've never heard of anyone claiming end link failure.

Edit: I do understand the reason why you don't want the sways significantly stiffer than the springs. I understand they need to be pretty well matched for the best handling. However, I would like to know what that limitation is by the specs given for the springs and the 350evo sways rather than saying that the stiffest is probably too stiff.

Edit 2: OK - I think I get what you are saying. You are assuming the stock set up is perfectly matched in torsional resistance and spring rates. I guess I'm still not sure if they work in a parrallel or series relationship. If it is a series, then yeah I can see >50% starting to cause problems. Since the 350evo bar is right there on the edge, it might still be OK, although yeah, maybe less than optimum for the stock springs.

 

man, you don't get a name like crazymike for nothing. j/k

 

You got that right!

Sorry I turned this thread into a personal thought process blog!