Hey guys,
Just to show you how wives can take things wrong; my wife was looking over
my shoulder and wanted to know why I was getting all these emails about "sway
bars".
Apparently she thought that I was into some kind of weird bar scene!
Be careful out there. You know, email never really disappears. It just grows
and lingers!
Jack Woehrle
In a message dated 10/25/2006 1:49:10 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, wgrosenba
ch@juno.com writes:
Bill
On Wed, 25 Oct 2006 07:36:36 -0500 Tony Drews <tony@tonydrews.com>
writes:
> In a TR-4, solid axle, in my experience the use of a rear bar depends
>
> on the type of limited slip diff as well as spring rates. Plus, if
>
> you've improved the front suspension geometry everything changes,
> probably. With a Quaffe LSD, keeping both rear tires on the ground
>
> is vitally important. We ended up removing the rear bar primarily
> to
> keep the inside rear on the ground. We were loosing more speed by
> lifting a wheel than we could have gained by the improved
> handling. What we then discovered is that due to the funky roll
> centers of the TR-4 fitting a really large front bar actually made
> the car rotate better through the corner. The conventional wisdom
> is
> that increasing the front spring rate - either with springs or sway
>
> bar - will increase understeer. That's not entirely true in the
> solid axle TR-4. We have stiffer front springs and an extra leaf in
>
> the rear. Babcock's explanation finally made the light bulb go off
>
> in my head, and it explains the pictures we have of our cars with
> the
> inside front tire hiked up in the air.
>
> My car (John Lye's former autocrosser) came with a substantial rear
>
> bar, a substantial front bar and stiffer springs all around. It
> also
> has a detroit locker in a non-triumph rear axle. I also found at
> the
> last race that all of the corner weights are within 5 lbs of each
> other with half a tank of gas. I'm sure it rotated VERY nicely on
> the auto-x course! When I had it at speed at Road America, I had
> this wonderful sideways drift / slide through all of the corners -
> but was giving up like 5 sec / lap. I disconnected the rear bar and
>
> it still tends to oversteer, but is about perfect. The locker acts
>
> like a welded diff when ON the power and kinda like an open diff
> when
> OFF the power. You can still roll the car around, and turn-in under
>
> braking is like an open diff. I tend to be on the gas hard well
> before the apex and kinda dirt track it through the corner. But I
> don't seem have that welded diff initial understeer to overcome.
>
> There's also the soft spring / stiff sway bar school of thought - I
>
> haven't traveled that path so can't comment on what you need to do
> with sway bars if you don't hike the spring rates. Also, haven't
> tried tuning a car with a Salisbury LSD.
>
> - Tony
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