Dan's last comment on swaybars (unless provoked)

[jdbubb@ix.netcom.com (Dan Bubb)]

Christian makes a good point here.
Autocrossing a Scirocco means spending alot of time with one rear wheel in
the air.
Increasing roll stiffness at the rear will accomplish nothing if the 100% of
the rear weight is already transferred i.e. one rear tire is already in the
air.
But, increasing front roll stiffness, which may seem counterintuitive, will
reduce overall body roll and in this case will not increase weight transfer
onto the outer front tire. Reduced body roll, better tire camber, better
lateral traction.
For autocrossing in a stock class, it isn't a bad solution.
As a number of people have pointed out, they are happy with significant
changes in roll stiffness distribution either towards the front or towards
the rear. A lot of it depends on how you drive. If you approach corners
slowly and power out, a big rear bar may be the ticket. If you burn into
corners and count on trailing throttle oversteer to pivot and slow the car
adding a bigger rear bar may cause the rear end to come around too fast. If
you're young, maybe you don't give a shit cause those lightning reflexes are
always there on demand!
Just be careful approaching the limits after you make changes. Especially in
low traction situations where the change is magnified
Dan

----- Original Message -----
From: Christian Els <tiAn@usiw.net>
To: _Scirocco Mailing List <scirocco-l@scirocco.org>
Cc: <jester@westfailure.net>
Sent: Saturday, January 19, 2002 12:33 AM
Subject: Re: [tech] swaybar question


>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: <jester@westfailure.net>
> Subject: RE: [tech] swaybar question
>
> > I would personally never get a 25 mm front bar, why make the roc
> > understeer more?
>
> This may be true in normal circumstances but...
>
> For Stock class SoloII competition you can only change the front bar, not
> the rear. I went with the biggest stiffest bar I could find on the grounds
> that the less roll the car has, the more traction I can maintain through
> hard turns. This has worked very well. With R-compound tires this is even
> more of an advantage.
>
> The bonus has been that on the street under less than 10/10ths driving, I
> have found that the handling is not biased towards understeer as much as
> when I still had the stock bar under the car. Why? Dunno. Doesn't make
sense
> to me either but I sure like driving it.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Christian Els
> 1987 Scirocco 16V
>
>
>
>
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