I'm looking for a good pair of anti-sway bars for my MY 03. I'm thinking I want the pair to stabilize both the front and the rear. Is that reasonable? Do I want the adjustable variety? Seems to give me more tuning of the suspension, no? What diameter is good and what are the trade offs and things to watch out for? Finally, where can I order a pair?

 

Can't go wrong with ordering just a front Saner off this site's marketplace. Cusco makes a good fr/rear pair, as does Comptech.

 

[QUOTE]Originally posted by tcl
I'm looking for a good pair of anti-sway bars for my MY 03.

 

Unless you are changing the front-rear bias in terms of tire contact patch, the OEM swaybars are well suited for the car. Those of us that autocross and track their cars find that the handling becomes more neutral with a stiffer front bar. That's because the most popular tire choices for these specific activities increase grip to the front relative to the rear, inducing more oversteer than occurs when the car is stock.

 

I dont know about the 01, but my 03 WAS not very stable in high speed cornering IMO

Go with Cusco coupled with larger diameter wheel and wider tires.

 

But Saner has only a front sway-bar, which, I gather is mostly what we need to combat the S's oversteer, but why would we then consider replacing both the front and rear sway-bar as Cusco offers?

 

Thanks for your replies. I appreciate them all. I am trying to understand the motivation and reason for upgrading the suspension. Hyper-X is only partially wrong in his hypothesis. I've taken the Evo auto-cross 1 & 2 classes with the intention of learning more about the car. Over-all, I have to agree that Honda got most of it right for street driving. My main complaint is that I'd like the car to corner more flatly around extreme sharp turns; less dip in the outside front tire and have noticed that the most popular mod seems to be the front sway bar. That said, I wouldn't mind if the springs were a wee-bit stiffer too. It's true, I've only got 6K on the car in 4 months, but the auto-cross classes taught me a lot about the limits of the car. I need to refine that experience, just as soon as I can find another event near me (maybe the Mazda event near SF?) I'm not so much interested in going fast, it's the handling I enjoy, so autocrossing will be my sport. From what I've learned thus far, I have to agree that moding without knowing what you're doing is asking for a lousy ride, a waste of money, and without too much effort, a dangerously difficult to control vehicle.

 

If you're wondering about the Cusco, I wrote a review

 

I'll share some of my own experiences with your concerns about flatness around turns.

It's not difficult to tune a car (using aftermarket components) so that they almost never dip under any circumstances. The car won't perform very well as it will start to yaw (think of a helicopter turning only on its vertical axis). A car like that, without some serious changes in the width of the wheels/tires, will lose grip faster. I'll try to explain this the best I can.

The suspension's job is to absorb the shock from the wheels and tires and isolate it as much as possible from the rest of the car, in a controlled manner. In a hard corner, the weight of the car shifts outwards, causing normal suspension to dip/lean toward that side, and the inside also starts to lift up. To a certain degree, this is good. In order to be fast in the corners, you want to be able to apply/achieve as much side G's (force) before breaking the tires free and losing grip. If your suspension doesn't give at all, the force (side G's) has to go somewhere, and that'll be the tires. The tires now are tasked to absorb what it can in terms of shock (normally handled by the suspension), and maintain grip which will probably reduce the grip potential of the car if tuned that way (the tires will be doing more work than it should). You could try and compensate a little by reducing the total weight of the car (but you'll need to shed a hella lot), but ultimately you need to find the correct balance of firmness, response and grip.

Every car is different, but my 2 cents are specific to the S2000. There isn't much that you need to do suspension wise to be very competetive in the S2000.

 

Thanks again, guys. I'll have to give this some more thought. I'm still tempted to get stiffer sway bars, but I find Hyper-X's argument matches well with what I've been reading about suspension tuning. I'd certainly welcome additional educated opinions. Education's what I'm after right now.