On Wed, 30 Jan 2002, Rob Pennington wrote:
> Hi,
Hello.
> Has anyone done a performance comparison between the sway bars offered by
> the big 3, JC Whitney and Richard Good?
I happen to have two TR6's, one is my street car and it was formerly a
DSP SCCA autocrosser and the other is my F Prepared SCCA autocrosser. I
have mounted all the pieces that you are interested in on one car or the
other. I have extensive seat time with both setups.
> I'm planning to autocross the car
> this summer and am doing the standard/obvious things with uprated springs,
> bushings and shocks and looking at front and rear sway bars. Any advice,
> experience or comments would be appreciated.
Front/rear bars are a great addition to the TR6. I think they transform
the car from a car that'll let you get away with some over-driving to one
that you can "tune" to do what you want.
Regarding springs, be careful that what you purchase does not raise the
car too much. If you are seriouls about autocross, you do not want to
raise the car! Lowering the car an inch from stock makes the car handle
_way_ better.
The Addco bars are the easiest. You just drill some holes and bolt 'em in.
If your object is to get out and drive, I strongly suggest this course.
The setup is not without drawbacks, but the design is pretty good and you
don't have to do any calculatin' or tweaking. You bolt 'em on and go.
I believe that Moss re-sells the Addco, I know the TRF re-sells Addco and
you should also know that you can purchase Addco from a number of other
sources, including JC Whitney.
Note: you have to drill the front radiator lower apron for the front bar
and you need to drill the rear frame for the rear bar.
The biggest drawback to this setup is that the rear bar (from necessity)
hangs beneath the rear trailing arms. The clearance from the bar to the
ground is pretty small, maybe three inches. You need to be careful not to
"snag things" with this setup.
The one other drawback to this setup is how the front mounts to the lower
a-arm. With the Addco setup, there is a cheezy little block that bolts to
the a-arm and then you mount a "link" between the block and the bar
itself. The problem is that there is no method to self center the bar, so
it is possible for the bar to shift left/right and therefore give you
varying amounts of "roll resistance". This can be remedied my modifying
the block or by adding "collars" on the bar itself to keep the bar from
sliding around in the bracket.
Get the 3/4 rear bar and the 7/8 front bar for reasonable "balance".
Now, the Goodparts bars are much nicer. The front bar is shaped the same
as the stock bar. The mounts are all "rose joints", aircraft quality and
all the parts are machined beautifully. There are collars on the bars so
they don't move around (left/right) and the ends are adjustable for
setting "pre-load". Further, you can dial in your car with the rear bar,
as the length of the "arms" is adjustable by about three inches. The
mounting hardware is all "jam nuts", so thinks won't shake apart over
time.
The only problems that I've had with the Goodparts bars is that for some
reason the bars tend to bind in the mounting blocks. I have fabricated
shims to make the blocks less likely to bind on the bar itself, but I
think the problem is that the car itself is so flexible that it twists in
such a manner as to cause the bars to bind. Note: this is not as big of a
deal as it may sound, the handling of the car stays the same, it's just
that when I jack the car up and let it down, the ride height varies a bit
until I roll the car to "settle" it.
The jam nuts can be a source of inconvenience. If you're the type that
likes to "set it and forget it" then don't worry yourself with this issue.
But if you are more likely to set the bars differently according to
conditions (as you are suppoed to), then think seriously about not using
the jam nuts and using normal AN 365 (elastic stop nuts type hardware).
Note: you may need to use the so-called half-height nuts on some of the
nuts. The reason I mention this is that the jam nuts by design bind onto
the threads, and with repeated use will leave the threaded portion of the
rose joints with sloppy threads. If you do use the AN stuff, you _do_ need
to check them frequently to make sure they have not loosened up from
usage.
The rear Goodparts bar hangs down similar to the Addco bar. You do need to
be careful not to snag the bar on things. This means that you might have
to give up "offroading" or parking half-on, half-off curbed roadways. When
you do "bottom" the bar (you will, believe me!) you need to check to make
sure nothing is bent or broken.
Based on the two cases above, I'd suggest the Addco bar if you're new to
all this (and not sure how to tune the car), but if you're an experienced
autocrosser, you'll like the Goodparts bars.
Last notes: on the street, you will find that having the rear bar does
make the car more easy to "rotate". In wet weather, the car can be
downright "tail happy". You just need to remember to drive the car more
gently in the wet (or disconnect the rear bar). For both setups, adding
the rear bar makes it easier to lift the "inside" rear wheel on tight
corners, particularly the right rear (owing to weight distribution).
Because of this, I'd strongly suggest that you look into some sort of
"posi-traction" setup so you don't "spin your wheels" too much. There are
choices for this posi-traction, but the easiest to find is the Quaife.
Other choices are Detroit Locker (very hard to find and completely
unsuitable for the street) and the Salisbury unit (very, very hard to find
and ex$pen$ive, but adjustable). Quaife has dropped thier prices lately
and they list for about $850 from Quaife and thier resellers. For an
autocrosser, this is money well spent. Obviously, more money needs to be
expended to actually install the Quaife....
> Rob
> 74 TR6 daily dribbler
regards,
rml
74 TR6 Street Car 73 TR6 Race Car
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bob Lang Room N42-140Q | This space for rent
Consultant MIT unix-vms-help |
Voice:617-253-7438 FAX: 617-258-9535 |
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|