3 Wheelin' in the Camaro-anyone have adjustable sway bar?

[Chevy]

I'm continuing to collect performance data while autocrossing the '68 Camaro. Last weekend out we finished 33rd overall in a field of 122. I'm still a newbie, have only been autocrossing for 1.5 years so i'm sure in the hands of someone more skilled the car would be higher yet.

But-i'm lifting one of the front tires during agressive turn-in. I'm thinking the best solution is an adjustable sway bar front or rear or both. Currently the car is set up with DSE coilover conversion, with the adjustable Konis (one click off full soft, 550lb springs), DSE sway bar, DSE A-arms with their alignment specs, DSE subframe connectors, solid body mounts and front struts from Chris Alston in the front. In the rear DSE drop springs with adjustable Konis (also one click off full soft). I run Hoosier A6s on 17" Forgelines. Currently i run no rear sway bar. The car is low (3" ride height) even though it's street driven to the events (over 100 miles one way this past weekend). There does not appear to be excessive body roll during the cornering that causes a tire to lift.

I understand the solution is either more rear sway bar or less front sway bar. I could add a rear (Hotchkiss sells them) but if i continue to run non-adjustable, i may just shift the problem to the rear... Also many here have recommended against the rear sway bar in first gen Camaros.

Open to suggestions to keep 'em all on the ground...

Thanks!
Paul

[JRouche]

Just my 2 pennys but I would start with a rear sway bar. Get the rear end to follow the front in the turn for roll and it may pull that tire back down. But then watch out for some over steer. JR

[David Pozzi]

Hotchkis is talking about coming out with an adjustable rear bar for autocrossers. You might talk to them about it. Several of their newer rear bars have 3 holes, I would guess their autocross bar would be the same.

[rat_rod_russell]

Paul, stop by my place and take a look at this Hotchkis 1st Gen Camaro rear sway bar I modified for this 38 ford truck. I added 6 holes so there's plenty of adjustment on back there to compensate for most anything this guy feels like doing to the front.

[Chevy]

Thanks for the responses. So in general, is this problem solved by just having one end adjustable or both?

Paul

[parsonsj]

in general, is this problem solved by just having one end adjustable or both?Not to patronize, but the underlying problem is too much roll stiffness in the front suspension. Or not enough in the rear. So we don't know if you can adjust it out, or if you need a bigger/smaller bar to be able to adjust it out.

But anyway, it sounds like fun to figure out what's going on. Let us know how it goes.

jp

[mikedc]

Just put a fatter tire on the corner that's lifting.

[Rhino]

Just put a fatter tire on the corner that's lifting.
Other than increased weight, I don't see how this would help anything. As JP said, I can only see this as a roll stiffness issue.
Can you expand on this?

[Lowend]

Lifting the front wheel = too much front bar
I don't know if a rear bar will help you with this.
What size front bar are you running?

[funbnme]

I have an adjustable rear bar on my car that I got from SC&C. Note, if your rear shocks were moved inboard, then they might be in the way. I needed to move both of my shocks behind the rear axle so the bar would fit.

[Marcus SC&C]

Hellwig has had an adj. rear 1st Gen bar out for a couple years now. For that matter they have them for virtually every car in their lineup. Others are trying to play catch up now. They`re still the only ones whos adj. rear bars are made from heat treated 4140 chrome moly. :)http://scandc.com/hellwigswaybars.htm
Note that the end links mount through the frame so they don`t need an additional crossmember to keep from ripping holes in the floor.
Our clients have had really good results using them to get their cars balanced out. I`d suggest adding some more dampening firmness in the rear also. Your front end probably isn`t too far out but the back is too soft and is rolling too much. Problem is that the front and rear are connected in the middle (!) so rather than the front outside compressing more it`s using that corner as a fulcrum and lifting the inside tire. Mark SC&C

[JEFFTATE]

You might also try calling Kyle Tucker at DSE.
Since all his stuff is on the car , get an opinion from him.
He knows suspension design.

[JRouche]

After thinking about it.. How did you notice the tire was lifting?? I was always curious about that, like when guys are tuning the suspension, how do they see the tire lifting. Can you feel it or did you have an observer?? Guess it really helps to have a video of the car through the turns for post race observations. Then with slow motion you can see where the body and suspension are going and at what point of the turn JR

[ks71z28]

Having both ends adjustable is a wonderful thing! Set your roll, then adjust the rear for over/understeer, those Hoosiers are wicked! If you guys have never driven R compound or slicks, you have no idea what your car is capable or incapable of!

Keith
www.customworksproducts.com (http://www.customworksproducts.com)

[silver69camaro]

Lifting the front wheel = too much front bar
I don't know if a rear bar will help you with this.
What size front bar are you running?

It also can be too little rear roll stiffness, it's a balancing act.

Here's a list of potential issues that can contribute to the problem:
1. Too high of a front wheel rate
2. Too much front roll stiffness
3. COG too high
4. Too low rear wheel rate
5. Too low rear roll stiffness
6. Improper shock valving

[mikedc]

I was just joking about the "put a fatter tire on that corner" comment.

[zbugger]

I remember Mary Pozzi having such an issue. This was after installing higher rate rear leafs in her car with the Del-A-Lum bushings. Installed a rear bar and that helped it a lot. I think she said something like the front end was doing too much of the work and the rear needed to do more. It even helped Steve on Penny and James' One Lap Camaro. I guess that's why it's used as a tuning instrument.

[JRouche]

I was just joking about the "put a fatter tire on that corner" comment.

Yeah, got that. Fat, as in taller tire right. To take up the space from the lift. :) It was funny actually. Maybe too serious of a thought process going on here right now. Dunno why, its a limp wrist back end really, stronger arms are needed, in the form of a bar... pretty simple... I like to see the humor in all parts of life. It was funny. But umm, keep that Wall Street day job huh?? LOL J/K... JR

[JRouche]

Oh, and on that tire lift. I dont know how much more obvious it could be. He has a tight front and a loose back (no bar at all). So the body rolls and the front is tight, gonna lift the front cause the body roll from the loose back is pushing it over and the front cant control the body roll, so it picks up the opposite tire. Yeah, control the car as a whole.. JR

[Hotchkis]

I understand the solution is either more rear sway bar or less front sway bar. I could add a rear (Hotchkiss sells them) but if i continue to run non-adjustable, i may just shift the problem to the rear... Also many here have recommended against the rear sway bar in first gen Camaros.

Open to suggestions to keep 'em all on the ground...

Thanks!
Paul

Hi Paul,


It sounds like you do in fact have too much roll stiffness in front compared to the rear. An adjustable rear sway bar would be a sensible place to start, due to the fact it is easy to install and adjustable. As mentioned earlier in the thread Mary Pozzi was having similar issues and found that a rear bar made a big difference, and since then she and David have adapted our rear bars for both Bad Penny and Jim Shipka's One Lap car.

We have been designing and building adjustable rear sway bars for years, and the latest model for the first gen Camaro was designed with input from the Pozzis and other autocross drivers in mind. Our fixed rear bar is available now, and the latest adjustable rear bars will be in stock in early July. 2nd Gen adjustable rears are in stock now.

One thing you may want to look at when choosing a rear sway bar is how it mounts to the car. Our cross bar style mounting system takes the loads generated by the rear sway bar much better than systems that mount the bar directly to the frame area. As you know the Camaro really doesn’t have a strong rear frame to mount the sway bar as compared to a true frame like a Chevelle has.

Also consider construction method. Solid bars that are bent hot and quenched in oil are quite heavy and do not have the same spring rate as a tubular bar. Our mounting hardware and systems are CAD designed and track tested. TIG welded sway bar brackets, TIG welded and powedercoated end links with grease fittings, heavy duty u-bolts and hardware.

Here’s a brief comparison between our adjustable rear bar and a competing solid bar:



Hotchkis Rear – Ø0.875” tubular
Competing Solid Rear – Ø0.750” solid
Solid bar is approximately 35% softer and 70% heavier than the Hotchkis Bar.


Sway bars have a spring rate just like springs, because essentially they are the spring (force) that keeps the chassis from rolling. The sway bar attached to the suspension and chassis, twists like a torsion bar to counteract the chassis roll during cornering. The twist resistance (spring rate) is measured in lbs/in like coil and leaf springs.

The spring rate on our latest 1st Gen F-Body bars:

Front
– 900 lbs/in

Rear
– 310 lbs/in
– 380 lbs/in
– 490 lbs/in

Hope this helps and was not too much information.

[zbugger]

...2nd Gen adjustable rears are in stock now....

Tell me more about this one. As a 2nd gen Camaro owner I'm highly interested in this. Got a part number I can order?

[JRouche]

One thing you may want to look at when choosing a rear sway bar is how it mounts to the car. Our cross bar style mounting system takes the loads generated by the rear sway bar much better than systems that mount the bar directly to the frame area. As you know the Camaro really doesn’t have a strong rear frame to mount the sway bar as compared to a true frame like a Chevelle has.

Good point!!! Im not familiar with your cross bar mounting system. A link to the pics?? I mounted my speedway mounts to the frame I have with a homemade cradle. Some pics..

Started out as these
https://static1.pt-content.com/images/pt/2009/06/605b100_100-1.jpg

I TIG welded up these
https://static1.pt-content.com/images/pt/2009/05/b-2.jpg

And did this. To aid in greasing of the entire bearing surface. I added zerk fittings.
https://static1.pt-content.com/images/pt/2009/05/c-2.jpg

Grease gets to all the bearing surfaces.
https://static1.pt-content.com/images/pt/2009/05/d-2.jpg



Here’s a brief comparison between our adjustable rear bar and a competing solid bar:



Hotchkis Rear – Ø0.875” tubular
Competing Solid Rear – Ø0.750” solid
Solid bar is approximately 35% softer and 70% heavier than the Hotchkis Bar.The spring rate on our latest 1st Gen F-Body bars:

Rear
– 310 lbs/in
– 380 lbs/in
– 490 lbs/in



You guys get alot of spring rate from a 7/8" hollow bar.. I have a 1-1/4" x .250" wall tube and its at about 390lbs with a 12" arm length (pivot to pivot).. You say 490lbs/in.. What does that mean?? The lbs/in??? Meaning it changes that amount per inch of arm positioning from the low to high setting??

My bar is adjustable too LOL Well kinda. I just need to drill and ream for new mounting holes if needed..
https://static1.pt-content.com/images/pt/2009/05/f-2.jpg

https://static1.pt-content.com/images/pt/2009/05/b-3.jpg





Nice to see the manufactures post here. Keep it going!!! Jr

[Hotchkis]

Tell me more about this one. As a 2nd gen Camaro owner I'm highly interested in this. Got a part number I can order?

Hi Allen -

The 2nd Gen adjustable rear sway bar is in stock, but we don't have it up on the site quite yet. If you call 888-466-7655 they can get you more info.

JRouche -

Very cool suspension setup! Those bushings you made look like race parts.

The lbs/in refers to the spring rate of the bar. The sway bar is loaded under hard cornering, and the spring rate keeps the car from rolling and helps it return to center when it does roll. Since our bars are CAD designed, CNC Bent and then lab tested, we can determine the actual load and spring rate of each setting. As you move the end links further away or closer to the bar itself, the rate changes and it becomes stiffer... allowing you to dial-in oversteer.

[silver69camaro]

The lbs/in refers to the spring rate of the bar..

You may want to be more specific on that. Since ARBs are loaded torsionally, some people get confused when they don't see a torque measurement. Most companies use lbs/degree of twist and a 12" lever arm is assumed.

[Hotchkis]

We find it is more intuitive to think of roll resistance in terms of lbs/in versus twist. Many OE’s use twist (lbs/degree) to document their sway bars, but most race car suspension designers use sway bar rate in lbs/in to develop their suspension setups. It just makes more sense to use the same type of units as you would your coil springs or leaf springs. To make things easier for our customers that are constantly pushing to improve track times, simple is better.

We use CAD and FEA to determine the rate of our sway bars. When we analyze our adjustable bars, our FEA software is especially useful because it allows us to load any particular sway bar hole and accurately find out the rate for each setting. After FEA testing our prototypes go through Cycle Testing like an OEM part would, then they go through a regimented track testing program.

More often than not, our customers that try different settings trackside want to know how much force (through the end link) is exerted per unit inch of deflection (at the end links). Similar to a coil spring that deflects by compressing, the sway bar is twisting and bending when the suspension travels up and down. Like many road race and NASCAR teams, we measure forces and deflections at the sway bar end link mounting hole(s).

Twist or torsion refers to a member that is torqued resulting in a given angle of twist. Torsion is only a part of the whole picture, since the “blades” or arms of any sway bar also bend. The twisting and bending is what results in the overall linear deflection between both ends of the sway bar.

[David Pozzi]

I use the Performance Trends Suspension Analyzer software and having a rate in lbs/inch at the end of the bar is very useful to me, thanks for posting it.

[Marcus SC&C]

First off I want to say I have nothing against Hotchkis, we`ve installed lots of their stuff on clients cars over the years. I even recomend some of their parts at times. That said there`s a lot of stuff flying around here that could use some clearing up. Hellwig`s adj. rear bar for the 2nd Gen has been in production for 2 years already. Feedback from their clients and ours was that many cars needed a softer rate, not a firmer one so they added a softer setting to the latest version.
I`m interested in the weight comparison posted earlier. The .875" tubular bar is 70% lighter than a .750 solid bar? Hmm, the 1st Gen F body Hellwig bar I just weighed was a whopping 7lbs. That would mean the Hotchkis bar is 2.1 lbs? The mug on my desk, full of coffee, weighs 1.8 lbs...
BTW how much does that extra steel crossmember weigh? Speaking of which...the factory uni body rails, which the factory mounts the whole rear suspension to, aren`t strong enough for a swaybar? So you mount it to the floor, whichis generally not thought of as a structural suspension mounting point, and then if that`s not strong enough (suprise!) then you sell a $200 extra cost crossmember which is stronger because it mounts to exactly the same place on the unibody rails as a Hellwig swaybar. Oookay...
BTW David P. how do you like the factory Hotchkis mounting on that 2nd gen adj. rear bar? Care to compare and contrast with the Hellwig adj. rear bar on your first Gen Camaro?
Tubular bars are stiffer than solid bars? Um, if you mean a larger tubular bar might be stiffer than a smaller solid bar that`s true but if you compare apples to apples it`s not. A solid bar and tubular bar of exactly the same size will show the solid bar has a slight edge in rate. There is a clear difference between cold bent tubular bars and solid forged bars though, tensile strength. A 4140 chrome moly die forged and quenched bar with a tensile strength of about 170,000 psi is roughly double that of a typical cold bent tubular one. This is why you almost never see cold bent tube bars in offroad use, they bend and fail.
Knowing the rates of the bar to the 3rd decimal point on a computer screen is all fine and well but knowing what setting makes a particular car work best is what really matters and you`ll only find that out by trying it on that car, test and tune. Many of the cars on this site are running improved geometry front ends (for good reason!) which throws any calcs. done with stock front end geometry right out the window anyway. They`re often better off with smaller front swaybars. Hellwig offers enough sizes and rates that they can be used as the tuning aids they are. Mark SC&C

[JRouche]

Tubular bars are stiffer than solid bars? Um, if you mean a larger tubular bar might be stiffer than a smaller solid bar that`s true but if you compare apples to apples it`s not. A solid bar and tubular bar of exactly the same size will show the solid bar has a slight edge in rate. There is a clear difference between cold bent tubular bars and solid forged bars though, tensile strength. A 4140 chrome moly die forged and quenched bar with a tensile strength of about 170,000 psi is roughly double that of a typical cold bent tubular one. This is why you almost never see cold bent tube bars in offroad use, they bend and fail.

Hey Marcus, good to see you offering your input.. My understanding is with a torsion bar the center of the bar doesnt have much to contribute to the spring rate of the bar. Zero at the center. So many bar suppliers have chose to use a hollow bar to reduce the weight while still having a determined rate. Maybe a larger diameter bar, but less weight. Kinda why I went with a speedway bar. Three piece bar splined bar. JR

[Lowend]

You are correct that the center is less important. I ran the equations on this a few years ago and found that a 1.25" solid bar is slightly softer than the hollow 1.375" hotchkis bar , you need wall thickness on the hollow bar to be accurate (BTW - Hotchkis what is your standard wall thickness on the sway bars?) . - All other things equal a solid bar is always stiffer. More material to move = less flex.

I think the Hotchkis mount is an interesting way of addressing the frame mount problem on a 2nd gen. Namely that rear sway bar frame mounts really need to be welded in to be done right (believe me, I've torn one out). If someone can't weld, this is a creative way around the problem. BUT providing you have access to a welder (or can pay someone $50 to do it for you) I don't see any real benefit to the floor pan mount.

[Hotchkis]

The solid vs tubular debate has been running a long time. There are plenty of ways to measure performance and effectiveness. Since it's Friday afternoon in the middle of June, a beer analogy might be appropriate... some like Bud, some like Miller, others like Heineken, but they all get the job done. We have been designing and building performance bolt-on suspension systems for 16 years, and there are several other companies that make great systems too.

At the end of the day we put 100% of our energy into creating complete suspension systems that offer the optimum balance of performance, durability and ride comfort. We appreciate all the great input we read on the forum every day, and hope everyone has a great weekend.

[JRouche]

Hahaha.. I gotta stay outta these "which is better" subjects LOL Too deep for me. Umm, bottom line with our semi stock cars is what fits!!! If it fits then we are most of the way there. And thats where I have to say thanks to all the after market suppliers. Alot of work has gone into fitment.

And really the bottom line. Just about everyone on this site has a common link. We all are bettering our cars one way or another.

Hollow or solid, stiff or limp... Either way, the car will be better off than before the modification was made, we hope anyway :) JR

[Lowend]

... BTW - Hotchkis what is your standard wall thickness on the sway bars?

[Hotchkis]

Lowend -

Tubing wall thickness varies depending upon application. Our C10 truck or B-Body bars are thicker than our import and euro bars, etc. While we disclose sway bar spring rate and other info most other manufacturers don't share, specific application wall thickness is proprietary.

[Chevy]

Wow, looks like you guys have been busy burnin' this thread up while i was away. Wanted to comment on a few things.


Hellwig has had an adj. rear 1st Gen bar out for a couple years now. For that matter they have them for virtually every car in their lineup. Others are trying to play catch up now. They`re still the only ones whos adj. rear bars are made from heat treated 4140 chrome moly. :)http://scandc.com/hellwigswaybars.htm
Note that the end links mount through the frame so they don`t need an additional crossmember to keep from ripping holes in the floor.


Marcus, these didn't show up in my initial search, thanks! It looks like ubolt about the axle and drill and bolt in the frame rails, correct? Do you have info on the rates for the three adjustable positions?

[Chevy]

Good point!!! Im not familiar with your cross bar mounting system. A link to the pics?? I mounted my speedway mounts to the frame I have with a homemade cradle. Some pics..



JRouche, Awesome job! Thanks for sharing the pics!
Paul

[Chevy]

Hi Paul,


It sounds like you do in fact have too much roll stiffness in front compared to the rear. An adjustable rear sway bar would be a sensible place to start, due to the fact it is easy to install and adjustable. As mentioned earlier in the thread Mary Pozzi was having similar issues and found that a rear bar made a big difference, and since then she and David have adapted our rear bars for both Bad Penny and Jim Shipka's One Lap car.

We have been designing and building adjustable rear sway bars for years, and the latest model for the first gen Camaro was designed with input from the Pozzis and other autocross drivers in mind. Our fixed rear bar is available now, and the latest adjustable rear bars will be in stock in early July. 2nd Gen adjustable rears are in stock now.

One thing you may want to look at when choosing a rear sway bar is how it mounts to the car. Our cross bar style mounting system takes the loads generated by the rear sway bar much better than systems that mount the bar directly to the frame area. As you know the Camaro really doesn’t have a strong rear frame to mount the sway bar as compared to a true frame like a Chevelle has.

Also consider construction method. Solid bars that are bent hot and quenched in oil are quite heavy and do not have the same spring rate as a tubular bar. Our mounting hardware and systems are CAD designed and track tested. TIG welded sway bar brackets, TIG welded and powedercoated end links with grease fittings, heavy duty u-bolts and hardware.

Here’s a brief comparison between our adjustable rear bar and a competing solid bar:



Hotchkis Rear – Ø0.875” tubular
Competing Solid Rear – Ø0.750” solid
Solid bar is approximately 35% softer and 70% heavier than the Hotchkis Bar.
Sway bars have a spring rate just like springs, because essentially they are the spring (force) that keeps the chassis from rolling. The sway bar attached to the suspension and chassis, twists like a torsion bar to counteract the chassis roll during cornering. The twist resistance (spring rate) is measured in lbs/in like coil and leaf springs.

The spring rate on our latest 1st Gen F-Body bars:

Front
– 900 lbs/in

Rear
– 310 lbs/in
– 380 lbs/in
– 490 lbs/in

Hope this helps and was not too much information.





Hotchkiss, super info, thanks! Can you post some images of the mounting method you mentioned? CAD is OK if you are still in preproduction. Nice to see there will soon be more options on the marketplace, i believe the competition just makes the products better.
Paul

[Chevy]

Regarding how to tell if you are lifting, i can actually feel it while autocrossing. You don't feel the lift so much as you feel the tire set back down is the best way i can describe it. I have some video confirming it as well.

Thanks to Russell for offering me his scales to make sure i don't have a weight-jacked suspension compounding the problem. He is just down the road a few clicks so i am gonna take him up on the offer tomorrow. I'll update here when we get it sorted out--and Sunday is another Autocross so i'll get some additional testing in...

Thanks again for the lively discussion, looks like there is one comercially-available solution now, soon to be another, and super images of a bitchin' home grown solution as well. You guys make this a great forum!

Paul

[Norm Peterson]

Can you tell if it lifts/sets back down about equally in right turns vs lefts?

Did the front bar pick up any preload either to make it bolt up or by uneven compression of the endlinks? Is this bar the larger size?


FWIW, circle track ratings in terms of load at 5° twist with 12" (side view projection) arms is essentially the same as its lbs/in number considering torsion only (12 x sin(5°) = 1.05"). Both methods refer to the bar stiffness from arm end to arm end as described in Puhn's book (and would be half of the stiffness taken at either arm end relative to the chassis if you're working up overall wheel rates in roll). The use of 3-piece bars offers the option of using relatively much stiffer arms which reduces the effect of arm bending (I'm guessing this is why arm bending is ignored in the circle track supply house tables).


Norm

[JRouche]

Regarding how to tell if you are lifting, i can actually feel it while autocrossing. You don't feel the lift so much as you feel the tire set back down is the best way i can describe it. I have some video confirming it as well.

Oh, I see now. Yeah, I guess you would feel it land more than pick up. Thanks.. JR

[Lowend]

I understand... just wanted to use it to do some math... but I totally get why you don't want to reveal

[Hotchkis]

No problem!

This is a shot of the cross-bar mounting brace:
https://static1.pt-content.com/images/noimg.gif

I'll get some images of the complete package and put them up today.

[Dave@Hellwig]

Some of the previous posts asked about spring rates of Hellwig sway bars. I'm not sure how Hotchkis is calculating the rate of the bar but it appears that they are using the rate of their leaf springs in combination with the sway bar to get their rates for the rear sway bar as the numbers posted seem very high for a 7/8" diameter sway bar. Most performance rear leaf springs for the 1st gen Camaro range between 175 and 250 lb/in. Adding a 380 lb/in sway bar seems like too much rear sway bar. For comparison sake our 1-1/4" sway bar for a Hummer bench tests at 423 lb/in. Our installed rates (including bushing losses of 20%) for the p/n 5824 1st gen adjustable rear sway bar are as follows:

Softest 75 lb/in
Middle 90 lb/in
Firm 112lb/in


As Mark at SC&C stated, the bar is a tuning aid and it doesn't take much sway bar on a 1st gen with performance springs to get it balanced. Our rear bar was developed to work with our 1-1/8" tubular front sway bar and provide a balanced handling package. We arrived at our diameters through on-vehicle testing including slalom and closed circuit courses. Rates are great for getting in the ballpark but you have to ride and drive it to get the car dialed in. Having the adjustable rear bar allows tuning the sway bar to match suspension upgrades and driver preferences.

[JRouche]

As Mark at SC&C stated, the bar is a tuning aid and it doesn't take much sway bar on a 1st gen with performance springs to get it balanced. Our rear bar was developed to work with our 1-1/8" tubular front sway bar and provide a balanced handling package. We arrived at our diameters through on-vehicle testing including slalom and closed circuit courses. Rates are great for getting in the ballpark but you have to ride and drive it to get the car dialed in. Having the adjustable rear bar allows tuning the sway bar to match suspension upgrades and driver preferences.

Thats some great info. Alway nice if you can get the complete package from one company. Matching parts and they have done the testing work for you.

When you mix and match stuff and make some parts like I did it becomes a guessing game till you get it on the road. My fairly low RC height and high CG lead me to start with a somewhat firm bar. I built in a certain amount of adjustability for the bar rate but after that has been used up I have to buy a diff torsion bar to slide in. Only 90 bucks but hey, thats my gas money :) JR

[David Pozzi]

Marcus,
On Mary's second gen, we used the original Hotchkis mounting point to the rear seat kickup area. This seemed like a weak area to me, and I took pains to get the mounting area flat and get as good as possible connection. After several years of autox and open track days we found out hotchkis now uses a frame connection and upgraded our hardware to that system, it does NOT use the crossmember, it uses two bolts with tube inserts in the frame rail.

It takes more work to install this way but I think it will make a stronger an more dependable mount than the original seat kickup area. The crossmember would brace things up even more if desired. Upon removing the old mounts to the floor, it had NO cracks or distortions other than what the factory had put there. I was pretty surprised we didn't see any problems.

I have Hellwig bars on our 68 Camaro with 15" chrome slot rims and Goodyear radials. This is a pretty common non pro-touring car and after one short drive over the hills, I found it to be very balanced and corners very flat. I didn't go crazy with it in testing - yet, but felt some understeer coming on when pushed harder, probably due to the poor stock camber curve, - this car doesn't have the Guldstrand mod, and has stock rubber A arm bushings. It does have the Moog 6308 front coils I have been recommending over on Team Camaro, and stock multi leaf springs in the rear.

I set the rear bar on the middle hole and it seems good this way. I will probably try the other settings in a week or two.

[MonzaRacer]

not to patronize, but the underlying problem is too much roll stiffness in the front suspension. Or not enough in the rear. So we don't know if you can adjust it out, or if you need a bigger/smaller bar to be able to adjust it out.

But anyway, it sounds like fun to figure out what's going on. Let us know how it goes.

Jp


like he said

[79T/Aman]

there has always been debate over hollow VS solid but I too have noticed how sway bar rates are not comparable but whats puzzeling is how the hollow bar is touted as being as stiff or stiffer than the solid, fact is if only the center section of a sway bar is used in calculating tortional resistance, you will come close but if you take into account the hollow arms things change because the arms are not in tortional load but are being bent, reduceing the stiffness, a hollow arm has far less bending resistance than a solid bar, furthermore the more a hollow tube is bent the less resistance it provides( CAD FEA software should tell that story).
Another point is that the crimped end has two moving sufaces as the bar flexes.
Bottom line is hollow bars have weaknesses and they have been known to break, I have a customer that broke one on the track, I have one that brock on our Chevy van, GM has currantly issues with hollow bars breaking on new cars, my sway bar supplier has done tests that support these statments

[JRouche]

there has always been debate over hollow VS solid but I too have noticed how sway bar rates are not comparable but whats puzzeling is how the hollow bar is touted as being as stiff or stiffer than the solid, fact is if only the center section of a sway bar is used in calculating tortional resistance, you will come close but if you take into account the hollow arms things change because the arms are not in tortional load but are being bent, reduceing the stiffness, a hollow arm has far less bending resistance than a solid bar, furthermore the more a hollow tube is bent the less resistance it provides( CAD FEA software should tell that story).
Another point is that the crimped end has two moving sufaces as the bar flexes.
Bottom line is hollow bars have weaknesses and they have been known to break, I have a customer that broke one on the track, I have one that brock on our Chevy van, GM has currantly issues with hollow bars breaking on new cars, my sway bar supplier has done tests that support these statments

Ummm, OK.. But when I talk about a hollow bar like what is on the front and rear of my car its a hollow torsion tube linked to solid splined ends. You know, like some track cars use. When talking about hollow VS solid bars thats what I am thinking of, my three piece hollow bars. Never heard of them breaking..

IMO, you cant beat the three piece bars. Sway bars IMO are the last piece in the suspension system. Tuning ability is a must with them. With a three piece bar you have alot of adjustability, with the arm lengths and bar rates. So far I love them.. JR

[79T/Aman]

yes I agree with you on a 3 piece bar, they are a tru tortion bar without bends that apply load unevenly