Contour Enthusiasts Group Archives Forums Modifications Suspension Large Diameter Hollow Sway-bar in production

Well, today I received my BAT Rear Sway-Bar, and it was instantly taken to the shop where they started bending material to match the design, except much larger diameter, hollow tubing, heat treated, and powdercoated. They are making the poly bushings in-house, along with everything else, thus keeping my final cost low. If more people are interested in this, I can have more produced. I am not doing a group-buy on this, there is no minimum # that needs to be ordered, and I can produce anywhere from 10 to 1000 of these units in the next month.

I will post tonite or tomorrow when I get final design approval from the engineer, and I have final material sizes and estimated cost per unit.

If you're interested, either reply or send me a PM, so I can get some #'s to the shop.

E1

OMG, finally!! Im in. PM sent.

i'd certainly like to see the final product.

not sure how large you're planning on going with the bar, but be carefull how big you let the brackets for the bushings get....on a reinforced subframe there is gas tank interference on some cars that will only get worse with a large bracket.........

I have the ATI subframe, which is what we are test-fitting everything against. Once I have it in and tested, I have 2 Contour's, and 1 other Cougar that are going to test fit the product to make sure it works w/ them as well.

If these work out, I'll be keeping these in stock at my shop for the next 2 years (our standard product life).

E1

Did anything ever happen with this?

I don't understand everyon'e fascination w/ huge rear anti-roll bars; This is the wrong route to go if you actually want the car to handle better . . . Of course, if you want dangerously excessive lift-throttle oversteer, slap the biggest bar on that you can make fit . . .

I still think that a very nice street Contour would have big bars front and rear. The reason for our low-speed plow is not too much roll stiffness, it's chassis stiffness and more importantly, front camber. I'd bet that increasing front roll stiffness would have a greater improvement on corner speeds than the rear, since the front tire has such poor camber in roll.

In any case, suspension tuning is not a black art, but it is also not as simple as some people make it. The whole package: roll bars, springs, bushings, static and dynamic camber and toe, chassis stiffness, tire pressures and sizes, strut valving, etc.; all work together. A car with a particular set of springs and struts will react very differently to a different bar than a car with another set.

Also, a car that feels like it handles well on the street may require a very different setup than a car that really has higher limits, which is probably different than what would actually get around a road course faster. Transients, steady-state cornering, braking, ride comfort, and more are all comprimised or aided by different modifications. Balancing them requires quite a bit of thought.

Bars should really only be used for balance, the vast majority of your roll stiffness should come from the spring rates. Otherwise the bars just reduce overall grip.

Now, I will give you the fact that you will need some bar both front and rear on a nice street car, because enough spring to give the desired roll stiffness would give an unacceptable ride for a lot of people.

In the case we are discussing here, let's start w/ a stock SVT suspension setup for example. As it sits, it has more lift oversteer than most FWD cars already; put a big bar on the back, and you have reduced overall rear grip and increased the lift oversteer enough to be a serious problem.

Now, let's put some aftermarket springs on it; higher rates, relatively balanced front to rear. Well, you have increased your roll stiffness, but relatively evenly, so the need for a much larger rear bar isn't likely here either, only enough to balance the roll stiffness ratio F/R.

Granted, I am WAY over generalizing here, but the rule of thumb still holds that except for very specialized situations (like a dedicated auto-X car that you need to rotate on the head of a pin and don't care that its dangerous to drive on the street) you just plain don't need a giant anti-roll bar. Springs are the big adjustment knob, and bars are the little adjustment knob . . .

Did the rear sway bars ever get tested?