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Rear Shocks vs. Rear Sway Bar

5K views 15 replies 6 participants last post by  littlewing1208 
#1 ·
What would be better upgrade for the Si sedan that does both DD and auto-x:
1. Rear Koni shocks, or
2. Progress rear sway bar

Rear sway bar is a bit cheaper but I am worried about my rear end dancing around while driving kids to school. Noticed how the guys with rear sway bar are 3-wheeling around tight corners in auto-x which looked odd. Also, I would like rear shocks to decrease back wallowing in slalom.
However, I might be totally wrong, so asking for opinions?

I am not worried abot SSCA classing and rules as we don't follow them by letter here up north - both upgrades are fine by local rules.
 
#5 ·
Do you already run in STX? Because the rear bar is not stock legal. Also, like littlewing demonstrated, the OEM rear bar is stiff enough to cause the car to do the three wheel motion, which is going to reduce traction as much as is necessary. More rotation can be achieved by simply adjusting the PSI in your rear tires.

Personally, I think that you should do the shocks, but I think you should do them on the front as well. The fronts are probably going to give you more overall performance than anything you can do to the rear. Also, I've found that with the right technique, I can get the car to rotate just fine in 100% stock trim.

just my .02
 
#9 ·
I assume you don't autocross then?

Springs only control rate of weight transfer, not amount of weight transfer.....just like dampers :). Only wheelbase, track, CoG vertical height and lateral/longitudinal Gs control amount of weigh transfer.

A rear bar would make it hopelessly uncompetitive and is unnecessary given how well the car handles when properly driven in G Stock form.
 
#15 · (Edited)
Well you are obviously more versed in the specific math then I, and I must admit I have had a slight bit of misconception with weight transfer. I have been more of a 'learning by doing' guy in my career, and suspension setup has not been my specialty. I have been around motorsports and building and tuning cars for many years now. That article did bring up the fact that balance is achieved with relative roll resistance, with springs or bars. Changing spring rate or bars front only or rear only WILL change the amount of weight transfer as per that article. So as far as making your overall stiffer your are correct in that more or less weight transfer will not occur. However changing rear springs to stiffer ones, will transfer more weight in the rear. I suppose I understand methods and changes that should be made when a balance issue is there, but not the exactly the math to back it up. IMO unless you have no other option springs should be used to change balance not damping rate

Can you answer this for me? or point me in a direction that can answer this? Why do static ride height adjustments, which changes individual contact patch weight, change balance, while in motion car's the amount of pitch or dive(roll stiffness or the car's relative height to the tarmac), does not affect individual tire contact patch weight. Is it purely a change in CoG and geometry change? I find it hard to believe when an 1/8" of height change makes a difference.

Thanks for the articles they were a good read.
 
#16 ·
I was only talking about total weight transfer in the general sense. That's why I used a longitudinal example to keep roll centers and TLLTD out of the equation (Lean Less: Grassroots Motorsports Magazine Articles good article). TLLTD coupled with a conversation about tire saturation makes for an interesting topic that doesn't come up much.

I'm not 100% sure what you are asking in the second paragraph, but let me attempt to tackle it. Corner weighting doesn't affect right/left weight distributions or front/rear weight distribution. The only way to change those weight distributions is to move physical mass front/rear, left/right within the car. However, you can tune corner weights purely with ride height if you have adjustable height spring perches. The basically analogy is as follows: take a chair with 4 legs. Lengthen 1 (or 2 corners diagonal) of them and the two adjacent legs have less load on them....lengthen it a bit more and one or both of them will lose contact with the ground and you'll need a package of sugar to balance the table :).

Let's apply this to a car:

So when you raise the ride height of a coilover you are simply raising the height of the lower perch relative to the lower attachment point. If there was just a 500lb bag on top of this corner, the spring would remain equally compressed but it would be a bit higher from the ground. However on a 4 contact patch car, each corner being suspended, when you raise that ride height the adjacent corners need to extend a bit to 'keep up' and in doing so, the spring is no longer the same compressed height anymore so the F=-kx is such that there is less load on those to corners. Then the corner you raised and the opposite corner have to take up the load lost on the other 2 corners.
 
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