Why do our cars feel so good when cornering yet there are many more cars that actually corner harder?I want to increase my handling but not change the ride height. I thought of stiffening up susp. mounting points (i.e. bushings and mounts) and body(i.e.strut bars etc) and bigger sway bar(s).Plus a good align and tires. I know that tires are usually the best bang for $ as far as handling.
Tires and a big set of sways will make you happy.(27-29mm Adjustable front and 22-24-26 adjustable rear...tires....FK451or 452)
Oh yeah...don't forget to get endlinks front and rear. These bars are a little too big for the stock endlinks.
I tend to disagree there. I would say hold off on the Endlinks until you need them. I can't say for the front bar, 27-29, Mine is the 25-27 front, set to 27. Been on for over a year now. Rear, I have the 22-24-26, set to 26, also been on for over a year. Both bars are using Stock Endlinks. I have had a full season of Auto X, 1 30 min session at Road Atlanta, and 1 full day at Little Tally and have yet to break an Endlink. I haven't heard of too many people breaking the front Endlinks, definitely more problems with the rear, but again, mine has been abused pretty well and haven't broken it yet. I would say to set the money aside for endlinks, so if you do break one, you can get it replaced quickly, but don't throw money into them until you need to.
The fronts you can get away with, yes. He has a WRX and that means those rubber rear endlinks. Those will have to be replaced when upgrading the rear swaybar. Edit: The STi of course has better endlinks as well as a differnt mounting for the endlinks. Those can be used with the 22-24-26 rear bar. The WRX and STi use the same front endlinks AFAIK.
I just bought Cobb sways front and rear for my wagon. Longfury, is yours a wagon?? If so, where'd you find a 27mm bar for the wagon???
+1 The first thing I did to the '03 was wheels/tires (Falken Azenis ST115 225 45 17) and Eibach Pro-Kit springs. I later added a front sway (Whiteline 24-26 adjustable). Two full days at little Tally and spirited driving around town were a blast with this setup.
The swaybars are a great place to start. You really don't need both at once to make your car handle better. I would start off with the rear swaybar and camber bolts for the rear. Dial out some of the negative camber in the rear and put more negative camber up front. You don't need to replace your endlinks on your swaybar just yet. Remember that tightening the suspension up all at once in the rear can make you snap oversteer if you are not used to the feeling and overcompensate. I would definitely suggest next a set of struts before the springs. I know a lot of people go with the springs first, but that is just for looks. Lowering your car without dialing out the negative camber in the rear will give you more negative camber as it forces the strut lower. BTW, I have a set of camber bolts, struts, and springs for sale. After the sways, it will make your car into an autox machine.
Interesting. I'm no suspension guru, so I'm curious as to why you suggest the rear sway first? If you're going to do one, I was under the impression the front was the one to do. I went springs on stock struts and although looks were important, overall performance was paramount and, for me and my application, greatly improved. Honestly, it's going to depend on your overall goals and purpose of the car...daily driver, track junkie, auto-x, etc. I'm not sure the average daily driver is going to be concerned with dialing out negative camber. Just my 2c.
I have a WRX, and the rear endlinks do not need to be replaced. Like I said, mine has gone thru a good bit of abuse and I still have not broken an endlink.
I think that many people have the opinion that on a wrx a rear sway makes the most dramatic difference. Since the STI already has a beefier rear sway, most people start with the front. I'm no suspension guru either but on my wrx if I was to do one, I'd do the rear, the last thing I want is more understeer.
The clunk everytime I went over an angled speed bump or cornered hard(I have several banked corners ) on my way home drove me mad with the rubber endlinks.
Amazingly a bigger front bar on a Subaru reduces understeer. If you change just the rear with a larger one(22-24-26 for example) be sure to put it on full soft for awhile so you can get used to it. Same goes for just the front. Big front bar + stock rear bar = power oversteer and lots of it.
good point, it will take a little bit of time to get used to it, bc first time you go hauling into a turn thinking sweet ive got a BIIIG sway bar, bam oversteer like a mofo!
STi's are different than WRX's. STi fsb 20mm rsb 20mm, WRX fsb 20mm rsb 17mm. Thats why you go with the rear first on the WRX. Rubber doesn't clunk. The noise you may have been hearing was the swaybar mounts moving around. I have the 26mm whiteline with stock endlinks, no clunking, no noises at all. It just may depend on the car. The front swaybar helps maintain negative camber through a corner, which effectively gives you more grip in the front wheels while cornering. When the rear wheel alignment is -1.3, I don't care who you are or the application, dial it out. This is where a large amount of WRX understeer comes from. If the rear can't rotate through a corner the car just plows. None of these modifications by themselves is the panacea, but all together they do a nice job of making the car handle neutral.
Changing the endlinks stopped it. It was on my 04. Drove me bonkers. It would do it when one side was higher than the other like going over a large speed bump sideways. I still don't trust those rear rubberized endlinks. We can discuss this for days. Everyone is mostly in agreement about the first sets of mods and thats good.
Thanks for the clarification on the WRX setup...I only did the front on my '03 WRX and the car, for what I know and experienced, was a blast on little Tally. Good overall grip and the rear rotated well...now, I probably wasn't driving the piss out of it either...so I'm guess I'm not comparing apples to applies. It would have been interesting to compare the two set ups. Thanks again for info.
Any specifics on align settings for an 06.Fri. I set the camber at -1.00 degree all the way around. Will take to mountains soon. Feels different already.
I have -2.0 in the front and -1.0 in the rear. You can definitely go more aggressive than -1 in the front if you want to but any more than -2 and you're asking for some ugly tire wear. I also have the 27 FSB and 26 RSB like mentioned before and the car is just a hair on the understeery side, but only enough to make it safe at the limit. I went kinda big with some Tein SSD's and corner balancing to top it off. I'm also rolling on Rota Tarmacs and Fusion ZRi 245's.
Does anyone know what size the sway bars are in the cobb susp package.? I could not find it on their site. Johnnyboy??
I believe they are 25 or 26mm. And the rear bar is adjustable. There is an option for rear adjustable mounts, but I have no idea what the advantage would be. I got the regular mount with mine.
i read somewhere that the hollow bars are less stiff than equivalent sized solid bars... i might be wrong though
Ive heard this as well, but I just put a set of the Cobb's on my wagon and they are much stiffer than the Perrin bars I had on my bugeye! It is merely a myth.
i believe torsional force comes primarily from the surface... but i would think that internal material would make a difference :dunno
I agree with you, Milo. It seems logical that it would work that way. But I would imagine that any loss of torsion ability would have been compensated for by the use of different materials to maintain a higher torsional strength. (Just guessing) I looked up alot of info about them prior to ordering the bars. I even asked SS, and he was skeptical of the hollow bars. But, without a doubt, the hollow Cobb's are comparable (if not better) than similar solid bars. And did I mention that they are freaking light!
Right. ^^ Solid bars made of lead for instance wouldn't even compare to hollow steel bars.... depending on how thing the walls of bar are (if you wanna call them that) I know I've always wondered about the whole thing and if they were made of different material.
From what I understand, the 25mm Cobb hollow bar is roughly equivalent to a 22mm solid bar such as a whiteline or a perrrin. The only plus is, I believe, the Cobb bars, although "bigger", are slightly lighter. Let us know what you think about the Cobb bars if you decide to go in that direction.
I read that the 32mm hollow bar that we have on our STi is roughly equivalent to a 29.5mm solid bar, but is lighter than what the equivalent solid would weigh. For the STi, I wouldn't mess with the rear bar, but for the wrx, go for it For our STi, we just have the 32mm fsb and aftermarket shocks with the stock springs, and it is an amazing difference over stock. The shocks are able to eliminate the bounciness on the highway at full soft, and when you want performance, you can dial them as stiff as you want. The only other mod that I want to do would be non-lowering front camber plates to gain more camber in the front. We currently have -1.1 F and -1.5 R. This isn't legal for the SCCA solo stock class, so we can deal with what the car has for now. -- Brian
You wouldn't go any bigger on the rear?.... What's different on the WRX's where a 24 or 26 would be good then?
On our 04 wrx, we had the adjustable whiteline bars front and rear, with the front set to full stiff, and the rear set to full soft, and it was a decent setup. For the STi, we were able to get the car to do what we want with the stiff front bar. The STi rsb is stiffer, so you could probably get one for next to nothing, and put the cash that you would have spent on the whiteline bar into other things. I absolutely love big front sway bars. The 32mm bar was a sizable improvement over the whiteline bar, but you might not notice if you don't autoX the car. -- Brian
I see. I put Whitelines on the front and rear, with 27(29) up front and I have the rear adjustable set to 26. So I guess I already know what you're talking about to a degree. Do you know if the 32 is too big for for a WRX, as in, is there a chance that it could be strong it could damage other components?
The 32mm bar comes with aftermarket endlinks, which will put extra stress on your control arm end link attachment tabs, due to the attachment, and stronger bar. The Whiteline bar is more friendly, as it retains the use of the factory endlinks. If you aren't going to autoX the car, I wouldn't even consider the 32mm bar. It also tends to make noises when you go over bumps if you don't keep the endlinks lubricated, which effects the WAF. -- Brian
Yeah. I've seen some cars, Honda's mostly, get some serious unit body damage due to large bars and hard driving of course. I could deal with broken end links and noise but a rip in the body would definitely be a no-go.
Whats with these sway bars? I'm getting some normal modded whiteline sways that are 22 FSB and 20 RSB.. these seem TINY compared to 26s, 24s, etc.