[sperry]

The idea of a swaybar is that you can effectively increase spring rate only when the car's leaning. That way you maintain a soft, confortable suspension on the straights, while reducing roll in the turns. I thought it worked pretty well, however, it's not ideal for handling because as Dean said, the reduce the independent nature of our suspensions.

I went with swabars early on because they allowed me to tune out some of the understeer for cheap. A heavier rear bar will reduce rear-end traction, allowing the car to rotate.

I started with a 20-24mm adjustable bar in the rear, and ran it at 22mm. That pretty much made the car neutral on the stock suspension. In an attempt to reduce overall body roll, yet maintain the neutral handling, I got a 20-22mm adjustable front bar, and set it to 22mm. I set the rear bar to 24mm to keep the +2mm rear bias. The car was a bit stiffer in the corners, and remained fairly neutral. However, I had a bunch of fitment issues with my front bar, forcing me to remove it. Once the stock 20mm bar was back up front, I left the rear at 24mm just for kicks. Turns out the car's slight oversteer wasn't too bad, and allowed me to turn better during AutoX at the expense of being a little harder to drive.

I've since installed an updated 20-22mm front bar that's had the fitment issues resolved, and I'm back to the 22f/24r setup, but now I've got the JIC's installed. I'm still not totally sure where the car's handling is at now. I think I'm going to leave the swaybars alone where they are and concentrate on tuning the handling with the coilovers. Perhaps I should go to 21f/22r to leave myself more options once I get the struts where I want 'em.

AFAIK, I'm currently running Gary's old setup: Whiteline 20-22mm front swaybar, Whiteline 20-24mm rear swaybar, KartBoy soild rear endlinks.

BTW: I had a problem w/ the KartBoy links when I was still at stock ride-height. The endlinks are a little shorter than stock, which meant that when the car was up on the jack, the rear swaybar would contact the rear latteral links. I was told the endlinks are shorter by design to keep the bar from hitting the fuel inlet pipe. I was confused until I lowered the car. Now the links are perfect.

Which reminds me: I think the adjustable links can be sued to "preload" a swaybar, and/or adjust the bar for clearance purposes. Potentially you could use them for adjusting a bar's effective stiffness, but I'd much rather have the more descrete steps of several holes since it's easier to know what you're getting.

I'm interested to see what Gary has to say, since I'm sure there's plenty for me to learn about suspension setup.