[Norm Peterson]

Going stiffer with the bars just to go stiffer isn't a good way to proceed when cornering & handling balance is really what you're after. Ultimately, you end up in the land of diminishing returns where huge amounts of added stiffness only reduce roll slightly and outside wheel operating cambers improve only fractionally with respect to that. While still adding considerable wheel rate in one wheel bump situations.

My semi-educated guess puts 2°/lateral g as a reasonable point to shoot for in a dual purpose street/track car. At that point (with springs somewhere between 50% and 100% stiffer than OE, bars maybe 50% stiffer), one front bar adjustment (soft to mid, or mid to firm) is only going to reduce roll by something like 0.1°/g. A single rear bar adjustment, maybe less than that. You probably wouldn't even notice this small of a difference in roll.

GM may well be erring on the side of conservatism with softer bars and springs, but I think once you've firmed things in roll up by 50% or so without screwing up the handling balance - that further improvement in terms of roll and cambers is going to come much more slowly than the increase in bar stiffness.


Norm