Contour Enthusiasts Group Archives Forums General Autocross and Open Track sway bars

I think I was saying what Terry Haines has pointed out. If you take the parts bin approach, and throw dichotomous parts together you end up with handling worse than when you started out.

A bigger rear sway bar will reduce understeer and provide more oversteer. But Jackie Stewart and some other famous guy helped design the handling in our cars and made it pretty darn neutral to begin with. Too much oversteer makes you unstable at speed and more likely to swap ends in steady state curves and even more so in slalom-like transitional maneuvers.

I would have told him to get Terry's/L8apex's aussie bar but he said he did not WANT more oversteer. Ideally you would want about the same handling characteristics we already have but at a higher limit of adhesion. That's why many autocrossers just buy sticky autocross tires. The tires leave the same overall balance but increase the lateral g, acceleration and braking capability. And if you get Koni or other adjustable shocks, you can fine tune with them as Eric Ford pointed out in his thread about the Peru National Tour event. Stiffer shock settings in front decrease oversteer, stiffer settings in the rear decrease understeer.