Using the suspension calculator, I found that on my otherwise stock 2004 S2000 if I swap in a 2000-2001 front sway bar I will achieve very close to the same overall balance as the 2009CR S2000. What are the drawbacks of achieving this balance with a sway bar vs springs? For street driving would this not yield a more forgiving ride quality and although with a staggered setup it should understeer, if a swap to a square setup is used what should the expectations be? Any help would be appreciated.

 

Not having stock sway bar sizes in front of me, I'd guess pretty modest change in handling balance. Presumably front CR bar is stiffer, so slightly more understeer/less oversteer.
What is your usage? Spirited street or track days? For "spirited street" modest sway bar changes and square vs. stagger shouldn't really yield massive changes in balance.
If you add front bar stiffness, perhaps you could add front camber if you are within stock front adjustment range...

 

It isn't quite that simple. Springs affect how the entire car behaves, but so does how the dampers handle the spring rates. Sway bars are only going to isolate roll stiffness. An increase (or decrease) in spring rate will not necessarily equal a better or worse change in ride quality as that is very dependent on how the damper is handling the rates of those springs.

 

You may perceive flatter cornering. Technically, you would expect a slightly less forgiving ride quality when one side of the front end hits a bump, e.g. pothole. I doubt that will be perceptible.

If you're just driving on the road, I do not see why bother changing it. It's a minimal change and unless you're a crazy person, you're not really trying to thread the needle between over and understeer on public streets. If anything, I think it would make things slightly less fun and tend towards understeer.

I don't see the value in the generator/calculation tool at this point. Maybe as a fun thought experiment and learning tool. At this point, the platform is 20+ years old. Setups for any given use case are pretty well established and public knowledge. I trust tested and true over a spreadsheet that someone made.

 

Lots of misunderstanding in this thread.

He isn't asking what the effects of increasing front swaybar is, he has actual numbers from the calculator to back up exactly what the effects, along with his other suspension mods, result in.

His specific question is how achieving a given wheel rate with more swaybar compares to achieving it with more spring.

I think its implied that the shocks would be setup to match whatever spring was used.

So how would these two setups compare? The more swaybar version would corner a little flatter. It would theoretically be slightly more comfortable. As pointed out in an earlier post, it would theoretically be slightly similarly comfortable to the more spring version in scenarios where one wheel was impacted significantly more than the other (because in that situation the real bump wheelrate would be the same, whereas in a left right equal bump scenario the more swaybar version has less bump wheelrate).

But I doubt it'd make any significant difference in actual perceived comfort, if you could somehow ride in each of these versions back to back.

We aren't building a racecar here. We're choosing from parts generally available in the marketplace. New and used parts.

You've picked a swaybar that was used in a factory iteration of this platform, so you know its not a radical choice.

No need to overthink it.

 

Car analogy you nailed my question, however I also would like to know if going to an overall balance similar to the 2009CR would be enough to prevent the car from being overly tail happy with a square setup?

 

I think best person to answer rhatwoukd be someone that has a CR, or CR suspension, and has gone with square. The problem is their idea of balance might be your definition of oversteer(or the opposite, understeer).

You could look through old posts of people that run square, and discussed adding a CR front bar to 'tame the rear'. See what setup they had, what bars, what coilovers, then lookup spring rate for those coilovers, plug it all into calculator. See what bias range had people with square setups looking for more forward bias. Then compare their setup at that time with where you're planning to be.

 

I have been trying to do just that. Very time consuming. Also I will primarily drive on the street with occasional track and auto-x. I really like how the car drives stock but my wheels are badly curbed so I am thinking of going square to allow for proper tire rotations, it would be nice to accomplish this while maintaining the current characteristics of the car as best as I can. Thanks for the help. If I go down this path I will document what results I get to maybe help others. Might just stay stock the car is still new to me.

 

I think that, for a square setup, you will want more front stiffness. I have experience on a stock '03 with 225/16's all around and on a '06 with 245/255's. I drove the '03 with stock front bar on 225 square for a season of autocross. I thought it was fun, and while I could certainly catch the rear, buying a bigger front bar (Karcepts) made me realize that the car was pretty oversteer biased. I didn't drive the 245/255 setup on the stock front bar for a comparison. While the '04 is different than my '03 was, I do think that going square is going to lead you to a front bias even with a CR bar. My Karcepts bar is significantly stiffer (roughly 2x +) than the CR bar where I had it set in the adjustment range.

On the street, I don't push to the point that I'm genuinely experiencing over/under steer. You can still feel the tendency of the car and if you misjudge something, you may be in sliding territory. That's just to say that the car's not going to kill you and spin itself into a bush should you go square on a CR bar. I do believe it will tend to oversteer and require quick hands should you exceed the limits.

 

I have an 03 that I did some testing on with autocross and a square setup but stick to CR Stagger otherwise.
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I played with some sway bars I had an a CR front with a standard AP2 rear bar seemed to be my favorite. The extra stiffness up front (lighter than the 00-01 bar) with the softest OEM rear bar helped tame the rear so it wasn't as twitchy. A friend of mine, Randal Wilcox (SSM Champion) drove it a few times and mentioned how it would do better with a BIG FSB.
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I went with a Karcepts FSB and it was a BIG change. The car seemed to push a bit more and I could kick the tail out more easily + predictably without losing time.

Then I decided to try no rear bar and it was a lot looser but I was much quicker. The oversteer was there without as much pushing and the car rotated very easily. Randall also loved that vs the AP2 rear bar and gapped a Cart by 1 second on a 40 second course.

Next I added a NC1 soft top FSB on the rear and played with tuning the Karcepts bar. It's not as floppy and roll happy but seems to be a good middle ground between no rear bar and the AP2 rear bar. We'll see at the upcoming event.

For the staggered/street I run on 2/3 out of 6/6 for the FSB which seems to be a good happy spot that drives similar to stock.
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