Best Sway Bars

jonesycm50 · August 2, 2005

I was wondering what sway bars people would reccomend for my purposes. I have put on intake, headers, and exhaust. I am interested in performance gains that will not reduce the life of the car or put strain on the engine. I usually drive normally, but do enjoy having the capability of being a faster more agressive driver.

bartkat · August 2, 2005

There are some good articles on suspension tuning at TireRack.com.

http://www.tirerack.com/suspension/testing.jsp

As a rule, the thicker the sway bar, the stiffer, and hence less body roll. I think Eibach or L-tuned would be the mildest upgrade, and then move up from there.

jonesycm50 · August 3, 2005

There are some good articles on suspension tuning at TireRack.com.

http://www.tirerack.com/suspension/testing.jsp

As a rule, the thicker the sway bar, the stiffer, and hence less body roll. I think Eibach or L-tuned would be the mildest upgrade, and then move up from there.

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Difference between strut bars and a strut tower???

bartkat · August 3, 2005

There are some good articles on suspension tuning at TireRack.com.

http://www.tirerack.com/suspension/testing.jsp

As a rule, the thicker the sway bar, the stiffer, and hence less body roll. I think Eibach or L-tuned would be the mildest upgrade, and then move up from there.

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Difference between strut bars and a strut tower???

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I'm talking sway bars here, the springy rods that tie to the lower suspension to reduce body roll.

Strut tower bars/strut bars tie the tops of the shock towers together under the hood and in the trunk. They add some stiffness to the unibody but don't really do much for body roll. Some of the ones for IS300 will rub on the engine cover, so one must be careful to get the ones that don't. I don't think there's much difference otherwise as long as you don't get the real cheapos.

The items that will most affect handling would be shocks/springs, then front and rear sway bars.

Here's a series of articles on how auto suspensions work.

http://auto.howstuffworks.com/car-suspension.htm

jonesycm50 · August 4, 2005

Thanks a lot bartkat you've been really helpful, these readings are helping my knowledge progress quickly, I wish I had joined some of these chats before I started making modifications, would have changed some of my earlier buys.