Sway bar and front suspension questions

graham1524

graham1524

Well-known member
Setting my truck up to be an autocross CAM truck. Big goal is to keep the front from pushing, so my question is whats the smallest sway bar I can get and put in the front?

Also, I have the AFCO coilovers in the front but was wondering if anyone has written down what the weight savings is for stock control arms vs tubular arms.

Any suggestions and feedback is encouraged
 
JSM

JSM

Active member
Re: Sway bar and front suspension questions

The current trend in racing is a soft spring, heavy sway bar. This gives you better ride, keeps the tire on the road over bumps etc, heavy sway bar controls the body roll.

Our trucks understeer badly as we all know. I am not sure I would go smaller sway bar to fix the issue, although you are on the right track. Research other ways to control understeer, by way of either increasing traction on front, or decreasing traction on rear. (bet everyone doesn't realize an 11" wide rear will make it understeer even worse).

If you want to get a bit more advanced look at roll centers also, this is where the top notch race teams go to win.
 
graham1524

graham1524

Well-known member
Re: Sway bar and front suspension questions

JSM said:
The current trend in racing is a soft spring, heavy sway bar. This gives you better ride, keeps the tire on the road over bumps etc, heavy sway bar controls the body roll.

Our trucks understeer badly as we all know. I am not sure I would go smaller sway bar to fix the issue, although you are on the right track. Research other ways to control understeer, by way of either increasing traction on front, or decreasing traction on rear. (bet everyone doesn't realize an 11" wide rear will make it understeer even worse).

If you want to get a bit more advanced look at roll centers also, this is where the top notch race teams go to win.
Click to expand...

I have realized this and one thought was to do what the civics and other fast FWD cars do and put the 11" up front and 9.5" in the back. Should get it to rotate and keep the front from pushing. I do realize this would cause a lot of fitment issues as well however
 
JSM

JSM

Active member
Re: Sway bar and front suspension questions

graham1524 said:
I have realized this and one thought was to do what the civics and other fast FWD cars do and put the 11" up front and 9.5" in the back. Should get it to rotate and keep the front from pushing. I do realize this would cause a lot of fitment issues as well however
Click to expand...

And it looks funny, and lets face it nobody wants to look funny.

roll center, do some research on that. Maybe stiffer rear sway bar, stiffer shocks/springs in rear.
 
graham1524

graham1524

Well-known member
Re: Sway bar and front suspension questions

You had the 17x11 setup on the back of your typhoon, what did you do to get rid of some of the push when doing the time trial
 
JSM

JSM

Active member
Re: Sway bar and front suspension questions

Go slower, pushes less. LOL

Honestly after the event I did at run thru the hills is when I realized how bad our trucks understeer. I was studying then rear sway bars and how to adjust my roll center on the rear. Research I was able to use in the development of both typhoon and syclone rear suspension kits we have working now.

If you plan to stay stock rear, look at changing stuff in rear to help is best route in my opinion.
 
Don W.

Don W.

Stab it and steer it
Re: Sway bar and front suspension questions

For road racing our trucks how much negative camber and/or positive caster can be cranked into these things and would there be any gain in a modified upper a-arm to achieve greater of either or both?
 
JSM

JSM

Active member
Re: Sway bar and front suspension questions

Don W. said:
For road racing our trucks how much negative camber and/or positive caster can be cranked into these things and would there be any gain in a modified upper a-arm to achieve greater of either or both?
Click to expand...

The more negative camber you want the more caster or less you can take out doing so. If you want the truck to turn on a dime less caster is best, but it will be twitchy on the road.

If someone wanted to dive deeper, some different ball joints could be used to modify the front roll center. By doing so you could increase/decrease the amount of tire bite on the front as well as change the body roll.

In a syclone moving weight rearward would be a great benefit, without a penalty.
 
SYO237

SYO237

SyTy Registry
Re: Sway bar and front suspension questions

JSM said:
In a syclone moving weight rearward would be a great benefit, without a penalty.
Click to expand...


This would be an interesting experiment to do with 50lb weights in the bed. You could basically add/reduce weight AND move the weights around within the bed (forward or behind the axle) to find the best ratio between position and weight needed to help balance front push and possibly center roll?
 
rentedmule

rentedmule

wanna-be
Re: Sway bar and front suspension questions

If you're sticking with leafs it's probably better to tune out understeer with a heavier rear sway bar or adjustable rear shocks. It's pretty easy to make a rear bar adjustable so you can tinker with it to optimize things.

Using body roll to compensate for understeer will force your outside tire to do all of the work and your tires will over heat prematurely.

My experience with the 2wd platform is that you want as much negative camber and as little roll in the front as possible. A setup with a bit of understeer is quicker in auto-X than one with a lot of oversteer.
 
graham1524

graham1524

Well-known member
Re: Sway bar and front suspension questions

JSM said:
Go slower, pushes less. LOL

Honestly after the event I did at run thru the hills is when I realized how bad our trucks understeer. I was studying then rear sway bars and how to adjust my roll center on the rear. Research I was able to use in the development of both typhoon and syclone rear suspension kits we have working now.

If you plan to stay stock rear, look at changing stuff in rear to help is best route in my opinion.
Click to expand...

I'll have your rear setup on once they go on sale.

I have a bell tech rear bar on there now which is a 1' bar. I'm pretty sure this is the largest bar available for our trucks. I have been and am working on getting it as light as possible, not Harmon light but still getting there haha
 
Don W.

Don W.

Stab it and steer it
Re: Sway bar and front suspension questions

Instead of adjusting the roll center with the lower ball joint could you accomplish the same thing by raising the upper a-arm in relation to the spindle? IOW put your "roll center adjuster" between the spindle and upper a-arm. Ride height would not change this way. Of course you may -want- the ride height to change in which case you do as shown in the link. Just a thought.

However, our lower ball joint is well inside the wheel so to do as shown in the link might be difficult due to the lack of space between the lower and the inside of the wheel. Raising the upper a-arm might be easier. Our upper ball joint bolts to the top of the a-arm. I'd have to look to see if it could be bolted under the a-arm and a spacer inserted.
 
rentedmule

rentedmule

wanna-be
Re: Sway bar and front suspension questions

Howe, QA1, AFCO and a bunch of other companies make modular ball joints with different stud lengths to tune your geometry. They're not cheap but taller ball joints make a big difference in 2wd trucks.
 
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