I seriously doubt Bill is turning the center sections. I've had two different center sections. The first one was powder coated all the way to the splined ends and it was impossible to insert into the bearings. I had to wire wheel the paint off the bar to get it to go into the bearings. About a year later, I purchased another bar that had the powder coating stopped short of where it entered the bearings and this fit was optimal.

 

The 1.25" 1/4" wall bar I have mics out a bit larger (shoulda wrote down how much) at the inner end of the splines than the solid bar I have, definitely. Used a knotted wire wheel before trying to install the bearing, no paint remained. Bill might not be turning them, but for this particular center section, it looks like I will need to turn it down a little bit on the lathe.

 

Maybe you guys never met Josh in person. I have. He's a nice guy. Sure, he's "enthusiastic" on the forum but to pile on with out ever meeting him is probably not the best idea. It's a pitfall of any pseudo-anonymous forum.

 

Still for sale?

 

The rancor isn't about whether Josh is a nice guy or not -- it's about Josh consistently, enthusiastically stating his opinions as fact when he doesn't have a lot of experience to back them up.

All of the forums (and before that, Usenet newsgroups) I've frequented follow a common progression over the years:

1. Small forum populated by hardcore enthusiasts / early adopters. Not too much traffic, and not too much helpful content, but there's a lot of energy.
   
2. More knowledgeable people start to join and contribute to the forum. Still not a ton of traffic, but there's a high signal-to-noise ratio.
   
3. Word gets around that the forum's the definitive source, so tons of people, both new and experienced, flock to the forum. Lots of traffic, but the signal-to-noise ratio starts to degrade because there are a lot of less-informed posters asking questions and weighing in on topics -- sometimes with the right answers, sometimes not.
   
4. The knowledgeable forum members start to lose interest -- sometimes because they've moved on, sometimes because every question has been asked and answered fifty times, and sometimes because they're annoyed at the newbs. Their post rate drops, so while forum traffic continues to be high, its signal-to-noise ratio drops further.
   
5. Most of the knowledgeable forum members move on, leaving the people who don't know what they're talking about. Forum traffic is still pretty high, but the signal-to-noise ratio is very low.

S2KI's R&C subforum is unique in my experience because it actually turned back the clock -- it sank deep into Stage 4 as the B Stock setup became well known and a lot of the original posters bought new cars, but it went back to Stage 3 when STR was created and a flood of fast people bought S2000s for the class. I think it's a worthwhile exercise to delay the progression back to Stage 4 as long as possible. This is generally accomplished by pruning low-value-add posts, either by active moderation or by the members self-policing. The latter is generally not pretty, though.

Josh, it's worth reflecting on why many of this forum's fastest and most respected contributors are all calling you out here.

 

Thanks Matt.

 

Seconded. Yes, the early Gendron bars had some teething pains, but *all* of the early bars did, and Bill's the only guy who's stuck around and continued improving his design.

Strongly disagree. I think you're grossly overestimating the amount of money there is to be made off of weekend autocross enthusiasts, as we're a small, fickle market with unique needs. Something to think about: where did all the other sway bar options go? Saner? Simple yet bad part, and the company had extraordinarily bad customer service. The company's now gone bankrupt. Comptech? The first iteration of its bar had the unfortunate tendency to snap in two; the second iteration of its bar was a solid piece, but cost much more than the Gendron bar does. Doesn't matter, as Comptech also went backrupt. Ankeny? Solid piece, but some people don't like its feel, and it costs 50% more than the Gendron.

Calling Gendron out for being "way over priced" is uncalled for, in my opinion; he deserves to make a return on his time and to put food on his table. If he were to suddenly withdraw his "overpriced" bar from the market, you'd have to pay a lot more for the only remaining off-the-shelf solution.

 

Not to mention that there are more costs than simply metal and the like. Design, testing and liability increase the unit costs, which are not diluted through large quantities of sales.

Is this just the immediate- pre race season competitive and aggressive side to everyone?

I say we let the partes involved in the away bar sale/conflict work out their differences privately, the rest us lay down our arms and go back to team effort of being team Honda and beating the MX5(which is doing better than it should so far this year), and resolve personal disputes through racing

I'm ready to start talking about sway bars and racing again.

Example: I have my rear Gendron at full soft and it seems to be equivalent to just a hair softer than the mx5 rear away on oem mx5 bushings. Is this consistent with what others have found? The wheel rates to me seem like they should be virtually identical when considering slightly added stiffness of the BB rear Gendron mount.

 

I guess sort of what I was trying to say in my earlier post is that I think really the only thing wrong here is that Josh isn't good about labeling which posts are fact and which are just his initial (sometimes off-base) thoughts on a subject. Especially given how enthusiastic his posts come across it can make this a problem.

Ultimately though, I'm glad he's here, both because he has contributed some good posts and also because I like seeing discussion and he has gotten some good discussion going with his obsession with getting every fraction of a thousandth of a second out of the car. So I hope he is more careful about his posts but I do hope he sticks around.

 

wow! great thread this has become

in all due respect, The front Gendron bar works fine but the fitment might be hit or miss on custom items like this which is something I was willing to risk as I saw that the bent arms aren't exactly precision pcs. Mine fits but when I got to use the stiffest three holes, I have to take the arm off to get the endlinks out b/c my shocks get in the way. Would this be the case on others with my arms? I dunno. Could I have personally designed a better bar? yes, but only after seeing something like Bills and improving on his design to fit my car. Kudos to bill for his design and helping the community out.

I was going to make my own rear bar very similar to the Gendron bar. Found all the parts I needed but after not being able to come up with a real good and easy mounting setup with bearings, I just decided to take the easy way out and buy Bills new rear bar in the 0.12" flavor. I haven't got it yet but I'm hoping it's exactly what I want/need. I know the end links aren't perfect but then again, I'm paying for something that is already pieced together so I don't have to do it myself.. .

If you want perfection, please step up and create it yourself and stop crying so much on here. I don't see it doing anyone anygood. I believe Bill will continuously improve things with or without your public gripping.