Anti Roll bars Options

[yellowchinaman]

Here in the UK everyone buys Whiteline adjustable ARB for the rear to correct the handling.
However if you change the front and rear it the defeats teh object.

Surely there are other brands of ARB's around the world? What do you US buy?
Any technical information on them and prices of other options?

[3WayStunna]

Personally ive followed the Merlin Motorsports TSS 205 setup. C-one front swaybar, and whiteline rear. Btw whomever said that changing out both the front and rear only negates any gains is wrong. Im no suspensino GURU by any means, but stiffening up the front by any degree, even if just adding a strut bar in the place of NOT having one, is an improvment...

BTW THE MERLIN TSS SETUP....

As i told at the beginnig of the year, the purpose of Jonny entering and developing the car is to try to pass knowledge and experience to other runners, which hopefully will improve their performance.

For round 3, we tried to focus on perfecting the handling - as there is always more time to be gained by handling than chasing hp.

At the last few rounds you will remember the car sitting higher than some. This was to ensure enough shock absorber travel to absorb the bumps - otherwise it will bounce off the bump stops and lose grip and time.

After measuring the car in the workshop and testing on a fast but bumpy road, we could feel the car bouncing, and had some body roll. Also the car was high, meaning a high centre of gravity.

To fix this, we needed to do do a couple of things:
1/ Increase spring rate to reduce roll and travel of suspension
2/ Match damping to the increased spring rate ( reduce bump but keep or increase rebound)
3/ Lower car as much as possible, but keep absorber stroke to absorb bumps.

Based on experience, and with no budget to buy shorter,custom made absorbers, we simply raised the top mountong points of the suspension !
At the front we went from standard top mounts that sit below the body, to raised rose jointed ones that sit above the body.

At the rear we cut the top off the body area of the suspension mount and welded it on 50mm higher, with a band of metal welded all around to bridge the gap.

In all, we could raise the shockabsorber top by 25mm at the front and 50mm at the rear, creating this much extra travel, or allowing us to lower the car this much and keep the original travel.

Spring rate was increased 70 to 80 N/mm at the front, and 50 to 60N/mm at the rear ( to keep the same understeer/oversteer balance, but reduce the roll and stroke)

Roll bars were already the biggest available at 19mm front (C-one) and 20 mm rear (white line).

Ride height was set by measuring from the ground to the base of the sill front and rear. It was set to 145 mm all round, with the car on 225/445 x 16 tyres (which are used to lower the gearing).

Camber was about 1.7 degrees front and 1.5 rear, and rear track was parallel.

When we tested, the rebound needed 2 extra clicks, but the bump was ok, or could be reduced 2 clicks.

Overall result was corner speed increase of approx 15mph in fast corners, with good adjustability of steering input and good body control.

The engine stayed as last time with 1.4 to 1.5 bar boost. (it still hasnt been on the rolling road).

Although there was a little understeer, Jonny could pull out about 3 seconds on Adrian coming onto the straight, lose 1.5 to 2 seconds on the straight, but recover a little on the last corners to finish 1.5 seconds ahead of Adrian.

This post has been edited by 3WayStunna: Jun 9, 2011 - 11:58 PM