Thanks for the graphic and I understand what you're saying but since the sway bar, which is the primary "spring" of the sway bar, is free to twist and it's connected to both levers the force imparted and received is the average of the two lever lengths. An asymmetrical sway bar will react the same way whether a bump is encountered by the wheel with the stiff setting or the wheel with the soft setting.

Now if the angle of one of the end links gets extreme and causes binding I could see where that could cause "wonky" problems.

 

The magnitude of the forces imparted into the chassis through the anti-roll bar mounts are equal, that is true. But the signs of the forces are opposite. One endlink would be in compression and the other would be in tension. This is how the chassis roll is generated by the above scenario, equal but opposite endlink forces.

 

What nmrado is saying is if the suspension compresses equally on both sides that the distance the bar moves isn't the same left to right if you use the bar in different positions due to different leverage points.

The bar doesn't move that much because of it's location on the lower control arm and the distance between the two sway bar positions is small enough that it won't cause any issues.

 

yeah I would feel free to use any combination of holes. They're not that far apart so any difference in deflection would be very tiny. If you had more holes than 2 (for example a gendron bar) then I would say to try to keep them not off by more than one hole side to side for that reason to not get weird effects, but I can't see one hole difference being significant.

 

nmrado said:

Quote:

The effect could be minimal, but it's based on the bump encountered, stiffness of the coil springs, stiffness of the anti-roll bar, etc.

I understand what your saying here finally. I had to do a thought experiment involving a super strong, non-flexing sway bar and a suspension with very soft springs. Imagining the suspension arm with a short lever hitting a bump with one wheel the opposite suspension arm with the longer lever would be deflected more and cause the chassis to roll. The softer the sway bar and the stiffer the springs the less differential suspension movement you'd have. So yes it would be preferable to keep the sway bar end links set equally but a small difference would probably be ok.


Sorry it took me so long to get it.

 

No worries, Rob. I know I can come across as argumentative, but if we had this discussion in person... it'd be just that, a discussion.

 

With deflection in the bar, the side with the longer arm would deflect less because the spring will have more leverage on that side.. but the end point is correct - it makes a difference.

 

You're all welcome for my prompting of this interesting discussion

So I basically already had in theory all along that the pure torsional spring aspect made the assymetry irrelevant, but that there would be slight differences due to the fixed points in the system, which could include where/how the bushings were placed, end link geometry, etc. Likely things that my driving finesse is not up to detecting.

What I was looking for was more practical confirmation about our specific situation such as; do we have issues with binding w/regards to the way our bushings or end link geometry is such that the 'wonkiness' would appear due to the speed of the event (bump) vs. the ability for things to move freely. I certainly got this confirmation that no, there is no practical issue here that magnifies it beyond the theoretical.

In addition I got the opinion that I might have wanted to go with a stiffer bar (I seem to recall the Eibach as having been a good choice if unwilling to pony up for a Gendron, or kill somebody for a Saner) but I will incrementally adding aero and stiffer springs through out the year so I'm making gross adjustments and not merely fine tuning. I just wanted to go out square and not be doing donuts the first time out.

Thanks all for an interesting discussion, both theoretical and practical.

 

A productive discussion on the internet!?! Preposterous!

By the way I didn't mention that I actually did run my Gendron this way for a while (one hole off side to side) with adjustable end links and did not notice any "wonkiness".

But as others have said, you probably want to start off on full stiff - the eibach is pretty soft compared to most of the bars people are running.

 

Let me rectify that then. You all suck and have stoopid ideas. I don't even know why I asked here as I already knew everything and just should have asked the real question I wanted to. I just bought an s2k yesterday; should I put Buddy Club or Koni's on it?

Now I'm all depressed though. First, i ordered a fresh set of the new Z2's quite literally 4 days before reading the GRM article where the BFG Rival's are pissing all over them. I didn't even need the tires for several weeks, so it was just happenstance. So here I am with new tires in the garage being all inferior and costing me imaginary tenths already. Now I learned that my memory of what FSB I settled on based on perusal of this forum sometime last year turns out to be some weak-ass spindly thing and I could have done better by just wrapping the oem bar with 30 layers of Duck Tape (tm) to increase the torsional stiffness rather than [fortunately only] spending a little under a couple hundred bucks on said inferior bar.

After I do all my gross suspension changes this year, I'll have to revisit the bar. But at least I'll have some seat time to know which direction I want to go. I just came to understand it was a truism that I did NOT want to put a square setup on the car and change nothing from running staggered, and that the typical first step is a stiffer FSB (though I prefer to not limit grip but rather add it, which is why my next steps are adding rear grip to balance).

Back to the main point though. Thanks for all your dumb ideas that I'll just ignore anyway because I have a friend that told me something else.