so after having a verry indebth discusion with james hickerson the lead engineer at eibach about sams drift cars and recalling a little convo with the guys from gardella everyone has told me the same thing in regards to suspension. and that is when its all said and done the thing your going to adjust and make the most difference in a drift car is going to be the sway bars. maybe its just me but weather you have one on your car or run a stock one im sure there has to be a market for adjustable or flat bar sway bars and adjustable links for the s chassis cars. in a competitive setting i know i would have loved some adjustability in the sway bars with ryans s14 to help in latteral movement. so ya just throwing out food for thought and maybe someone can pipe in with there opinion of sway bars.
yeah and maybe be one of the first to have end links lncluded in the same set-up. and have a little more development for lower cars which i dont think has been totally done right yet
Aren't tons of people just removing rear sway bars all together now? Front sway bars seem extremely neglected, never heard anyone saying anything about a huge increase in performance with an upgraded front sway bar (on a drift car).
thats where you are verry wrong sway bars are the only thing that make a giant improvement in latteral stability in the car while sideways, the wat it was explaned and i have felt is instead of running super high spring rates you can run lower spring rates for traction and then use the sway bars and dampening settings to adjust your latteral motion transfer. look at rmr and hubinet and tanner and those guys cars they run mostly the same settings at all the tracks (asside from weather ) and use the sway bar as the focal point for adjustment.
the reason i brought them up all together is in order to keep the s chassis competitive at a professional level the next step imho needs to be taken which would be adjustabl sways,
also refer to conrag grunwald and gardella that put tremendous amounts of emfasis on the sways being a vital part to there set up. granted there a dif suspension configuration, but in order to maintain speed and angle and controle at the verry limit you need to have as much on your side to adjust as possible.
removing parts only dose one thing puts much much more stress on the coilover system and limits the amount of dampening that will actually make a difference
again im not a pro dan and martin are thats why i bring it up to them but dose not look like its a factor for these guys so who knows.....
Dave got some for his lexus because the car is a heavy beast, so it makes a good difference thats appreciated. It was actually supra sway bars what needed a custom mounting bracket and also custom end links because the OEM end link was bent since dave lowered his car.
Kado San was running no rear sway bar for traction in the 350Z
Martin's FC has the front sway bar removed because of the steering angle. Rear sway bar removed too and he says he could feel zero difference because the stock sway bars on that car are like toy sway bars with pencil thickness, and his car is really light.
Its agreed that all the falcon guys run soft springs and stiff sways
Falken cars are running adjustable swaybar and soft suspension controlled by damping.
Basically swaybars are a quick way to change the balance of the chassis without affecting much else. You can set the car to over/understeer by adjusting stiffness in the bars without compromising too much grip in the front or rear.