was wondering if it would be more effective to drop a car either with good springs or pretty good coilovers or would it be about the same to just get all the tie bars, sway bars, and strut bars??? not for any specific car just asking in general...would handling improve the same in both or is one better then the other?

 

Setup your suspension with springs / shocks. Then tune with swaybars. Tiebars / strut tower bars don't have much effect at all.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by AutoXer &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">Setup your suspension with springs / shocks. Then tune with swaybars. Tiebars / strut tower bars don't have much effect at all.</TD></TR></TABLE>

Is there any specific reasons for this? I was just wondering because I was planning on doing sways before springs/shock. Perhaps I should rethink that.

 

I concur with AutoXer, you will get more performance and impact for your money with performance springs and dampers. Sway bars if needed at all would be third.

The stress bars to help stiffen the chassis will have very limited effect on real performance, especially the softer the rest of the car is. For them to be actually contributing, your chassis needs to be flexing and a chassis on a softly sprung and damped car is not going to be distorting much at all. Once the suspension gets quite a bit stiffer to the point that it is the car shell that is flexing, then bars like these can (if designed right and a number of them on the market are not) begin contributing to the car.

 

Thanks for that responce, very helpful. I still have one question, you say that the sway with the softer spring/shocks (ie- stock) will not make that much of a difference. I would think that a car like mine with no rear sway at all would see much inprovement from adding one. Maybe I have this idea in my head because many people say that, but who knows I dont know as I have no first hand experience with it.

Also, I thought the rear sway bar's main purpose was to keep the chasis from rolling and the thicker it is the less understeer/more oversteer there would be. You seem to be ignoring this aspect. Can you comment a little more on that or am I completly wrong?

I am not sure but maybe I am reading your post wrong. Are you talking about all types of bars (sway, strut tower, braces, etc) or all of them minus sway bars. I agree that most strut tower bars and things like that are not needed until very high streses are placed on the car/chasis. TIA

 

Swaybars will make a difference on a softly sprung setup. The thing is that you would be using it to compensate for a sub-par setup.

You should correct the problem of soft springs before adding the swaybar; which will significantly reduce unwanted body motion. This will have a much more dramatic effect on the handling than just addiing a sway.

 

Thanks now I understand. Yea my 130,000 mile stock suspention is def one thing I need to fix. I will now think about doing that before adding a rear sway. Thanks alot.