[TR] Front Sway Bar

Randall TR3driver at ca.rr.com
Tue Oct 3 01:28:33 MDT 2017


> There is no difference between small-mouth and TR3A in terms of sway bar
> fitment...

Ah, but there is, at least for the kit from ADDCO.  The front bar pivots
mount to the flat bottom of the frame extensions; but on smallmouth cars the
bottom of the extensions is not flat.  There is no place to mount the
pivots.

Not too hard to solve, certainly, but requires components not included in
the kit; and most likely welding.

Use of a rear bar is debatable, and likely depends on factors like what
tires and wheels you run, how you drive and so on.  My feeling is that a
small bar in the rear helps with a problem that sometimes happens, where the
rear axle hits the frame and suddenly unloads the inside tire, throwing all
the weight on the outside tire, which then slides until the inside tire sets
back down.  The result is that the rear end seems to skip sideways, which is
unsettling and hard to control. 

There was a review in Car and Driver that mentioned this effect (I believe)
in the first line: "It was an evil sounding, raucous little bastard that
would lure you into a corner all cozily understeering the way you'd expect
from a car with 2-liters worth of good stout cast iron way up front, then
throw up it's hands and bumble off backward."

A rear bar (when used with a front bar) also reduces understeer, making the
handling more neutral, which I like.  

But at the same time, the rear bar makes it more likely that the inside rear
will gradually lift, which prevents putting power to the ground.  So the
fast way around the race track is probably no rear bar at all, or just a
small one with a big bar up front.

-- Randall
 




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