rear sway bar question

[palauoriginal]

i was just wondering why people remove their rear sway bar...i have been searching through the forums and i see some people have removed their rear sway bar...wats the benefit of that? just curious

 

thnks

[OlderThanMe]

I never put mine back on when I put my car back together. I will be putting it back on though. I can notice a little extra body roll in the rear as well. I thinks it helps the car understeer though. having a stiff front suspension and a soft(er) rear suspension is what does it. I was thinking that having the front suspension stiff would make it respond better but it also makes understeer. When I stiffened up my rear tocikos and made the fronts softer it improved the handeling a lot. The car is really neutral in the 30-50mph range on very curvy roads which it was not before. Before it was understeer city becaust of the really stiff front setup.

[Dan Baldwin]

After mods to get decent camber up front, and reduced toe-in at the rear, I removed the rear bar after fellow drivers commented that I was at about a 7-degree drift angle all the way around the south oval at NHIS! It felt slower after removing it, no more "servo-steer" effect, but was in fact WAY quicker around every track I go to. Better drive out of slower corners, too.

 

BTW, unless there are serious unibody stiffness issues, the amount of body roll at both ends of the car is always the same! The difference is the way the rolling moment reacted front/rear.

 

Long/short, you may or may not need or want a rear bar depending on your setup and your usage.

[strotter]

I installed one (out of a 280) when I first did my V8 swap, and have since removed it precisely because I want to plow. That may sound weird, I know, but there's some logic behind my dumbness: My car is a daily driver - never has and almost certainly never will be on a racetrack - and I want to make it the very best daily driver possible. I want it to be impeccable under "normal", even "Honey SLOW DOWN RIGHT NOW!" driving conditions. The way I have the car set up, it's dead flat, is quick to turn it, and has good manners both entering and exiting a corner. But the reality is, the most important thing I need to be ready for is when some idiot (including me!) does something stupid which requires a fast (and therefore probably sloppy) response; under those circumstances I'd rather plow than spin, meaning that when the traction limit is reached the front gives up just a moment before the rear. I'm not saying I want it to drive like a pickup - lightning-fast response and high lateral g's are delightful, confidence inspiring, and a real safety benefit - but in the middle of something unpredictable and dangerous, when you don't have time to think or set up properly, understeering is less likely to make matters worse. IMHO.