[democidist]

So, I've been getting into AutoX with my 2017 Camaro SS with no performance modifications done to it. I'm trying to stay in F-Street, which allows for a single aftermarket sway bar (front OR rear). I've been told that to help with the understeer I'd either want a softer front, or more likely, a stiffer rear. Do any of you have recommendations? I know that Phastek has a couple of options for adjustable sway bars. Do any of you have experience and can maybe even tell me what setting to put it at? Thanks!

[JamesNoBrakes]

Here's the thing about AutoX, if you stiffen the rear, it'll be harder to put down the power in and out of turns. Although stiffer sways can be fun for all around driving and high speed stuff, I'd look at RE71 tires for AutoX long before stiffer sways. It's a lot more about loading the proper end of the car for the location relative to the turn, to carry the speed through. Honestly, stiffer sways can cause you to just skip/skid more in AutoX. This coming from someone that autocrosses with FE4.

Better tires, lighter and smaller wheels, etc. For understeer, I'd change to some wider front tires, because going softer up front would mean worse turn-in and going stiffer in the rear would mean less power put down for all the turns. Don't go nuts, square or slightly narrower than the rear should be fine. Also, get a track alignment.

[VR Baron]

Originally Posted by JamesNoBrakes

Here's the thing about AutoX, if you stiffen the rear, it'll be harder to put down the power in and out of turns. Although stiffer sways can be fun for all around driving and high speed stuff, I'd look at RE71 tires for AutoX long before stiffer sways. It's a lot more about loading the proper end of the car for the location relative to the turn, to carry the speed through. Honestly, stiffer sways can cause you to just skip/skid more in AutoX. This coming from someone that autocrosses with FE4.

Better tires, lighter and smaller wheels, etc. For understeer, I'd change to some wider front tires, because going softer up front would mean worse turn-in and going stiffer in the rear would mean less power put down for all the turns. Don't go nuts, square or slightly narrower than the rear should be fine. Also, get a track alignment.

^this^. You really need to search all things on this forum in suspension or in the autocross track and tips section. Your stock ss does understeer more then the 1le but that’s a combo of shocks, springs, bars, tires and suspension components. A stiffer bar may overwhelm your smaller less grippy tires. Stiffer bars need stiffer tires and the rest to work best. Generally softer to a point grips better as the car can roll more to get weight onto the tire to stick. Stiffer tires can take more bar and won’t slide but you have to drive harder and steer faster to make a stiffer bar work.And stickier tires to. Mostly bigger bars and stiffer everything are used for road course prepped car for higher speeds. Autocross wants softer shocks and bars, to a degree. The aftermarket bars are pretty stiff, sure the companies design it for the ss but I think it’s basically for street driving to make the car feel better and more responsive, not best grip. If you have to change a bar, and your car is really understeering, maybe try a stock ss 1le rear bar. But I think it or any aftermarket will be to stiff and may induce oversteer. Then you would have to add a front bar, which you can’t do in your class.

[weemus]

1. Alignment (work with what you have)
2. Tires (only thing that touches the ground. Big gains on acceleration, braking, and lateral grip)
3. Brake pads (maximize cold braking for those better tires)

[democidist]

THE QUESTION IS NOT, "Should I do something other than sway bars?"!!!
THEY ARE, "Which sway bar should I buy?" and "Do you have any pertinent information about sway bars that may be helpful based on your experiences using them?"
.
Look guys...this is not an either-or. The question isn't: "Should I prioritize a sway bar over tires or an alignment?" I will have to do everything that's allowed within the rules if I want to put down the fastest times. I understand that the suspension is an interconnected system, but I'm only allowed one sway bar...that's it. (and shocks, but you can't get aftermarket shocks that use the stock springs for this vehicle from what I've read. Feel free to share if you know something I don't.) I am positive none of the top F-Street Camaros have all stock sway bars. I am looking for recommendations on sway bars. You're making a lot of assumptions...I don't have garbage tires (I already have my next set picked out, they're not RE71Rs, those have been discontinued), I have good breaks, I don't have a stock alignment, I don't consider any of those "performance modifications" if that's what's throwing you off, they're all wear items and none interfere with daily drivability. I'm not allowed to put on wider fronts as per the rules, if I could I would, as that would certainly help a ton. Given how much throttle it takes to break loose the rear as-is (a testament to its understeer tendency), I am not remotely concerned that they'll break loose "too easily". At peak grip every car gets either oversteer or understeer depending on the conditions and setup. I WANT OVERSTEER! Right now the only way to get oversteer is with a ton of throttle at low speeds, I want it to occur with less throttle at low speeds and also actually be possible going more than like 40 mph.

[kropscamaro16]

afe power on my car no complaints do about 5-8 track days a year

[VR Baron]

Originally Posted by democidist

THE QUESTION IS NOT, "Should I do something other than sway bars?"!!!
THEY ARE, "Which sway bar should I buy?" and "Do you have any pertinent information about sway bars that may be helpful based on your experiences using them?"
.
Look guys...this is not an either-or. The question isn't: "Should I prioritize a sway bar over tires or an alignment?" I will have to do everything that's allowed within the rules if I want to put down the fastest times. I understand that the suspension is an interconnected system, but I'm only allowed one sway bar...that's it. (and shocks, but you can't get aftermarket shocks that use the stock springs for this vehicle from what I've read. Feel free to share if you know something I don't.) I am positive none of the top F-Street Camaros have all stock sway bars. I am looking for recommendations on sway bars. You're making a lot of assumptions...I don't have garbage tires (I already have my next set picked out, they're not RE71Rs, those have been discontinued), I have good breaks, I don't have a stock alignment, I don't consider any of those "performance modifications" if that's what's throwing you off, they're all wear items and none interfere with daily drivability. I'm not allowed to put on wider fronts as per the rules, if I could I would, as that would certainly help a ton. Given how much throttle it takes to break loose the rear as-is (a testament to its understeer tendency), I am not remotely concerned that they'll break loose "too easily". At peak grip every car gets either oversteer or understeer depending on the conditions and setup. I WANT OVERSTEER! Right now the only way to get oversteer is with a ton of throttle at low speeds, I want it to occur with less throttle at low speeds and also actually be possible going more than like 40 mph.

Go search like I suggested. Like everyone else. Hotchkiss or BMR rear bar IMO if you want oversteer being your understeer is that bothersome.

[JamesNoBrakes]

Every time I'm oversteering, I'm wasting time around a corner. It looks and feels cool, but I should be slower and tighter, as oversteering is taking me on a larger radius turn.

[VR Baron]

Originally Posted by JamesNoBrakes

Every time I'm oversteering, I'm wasting time around a corner. It looks and feels cool, but I should be slower and tighter, as oversteering is taking me on a larger radius turn.

Allegedly a touch of oversteer in autocross is best. Where rear snaps right back if it does anything at all. You just can’t drive crazy or overdrive. Easy gas and steering. Some do best that way, others like some understeer. I prefer just a bit of understeer I can control with gas. My car with square 305’s and hotchkiss front bar soft is about like stock setup in feel. It’s just that darn EDiff induced rear step out on exit that messes it up��

[Msquared]

Wow, there's some whacky advice and "facts" being given out in this thread so far! I think some people here aren't quite sure how suspension dynamics actually work. Let's hit "reset" and start over with answering your question.

Truly, oversteer is not what you're looking for because it's really slow. However, most people really don't mean they want the rear end to actually lose grip first in a turn, and I suspect you don't either. If you need to cancel out understeer in your car (i.e. get closer to neutral), a stiffer rear swaybar will accomplish that. But you don't want to go too far or the car will get slow and difficult to drive near the limit - not good. The others aren't wrong when they say that too much rear roll stiffness (be it from swaybar or springs) kills your ability to put down power). You definitely should not try a softer front bar! That's ridiculous for several reasons, but mainly you need to limit your car's roll* during cornering as much as possible, so a softer front bar is the wrong way to go.

But here are some suggestions for increasing your rear roll stiffness, including the adjustable bars you actually asked about (be patient and we'll get there!):

• Believe it or not, just changing the rear "D" bushings that mount the bar to the frame to harder urethane will stiffen the stock bar's effective rate. That's a super cheap and easy thing to try.
• I think the next stiffest (compared to stock) rear bar you could get would be the SS 1LE (FE4) bar. If you can get that part cheap, you could start there. It's not adjustable, I know, but it is stiffer than your stock rear bar. And with rear bar rate increases, sometimes a little goes a long way. The next stiffest is the BMR non-adjustable rear bar, which is supposed to be 16% stiffer than the 1LE bar. But I'd probably skip that in favor of what's next:
• The softest adjustable rear bar I know of is the Hotchkiss. At its softest setting it is 25% stiffer than the 1LE bar. The medium setting is 35% more and the stiffest setting is 50% more. Keep in mind that even at its softest setting, it will be quite a bit stiffer than your stock rear bar: start with the softest setting for sure. But this is why I'd start with the 1LE rear bar and see how that works. Finally, the BMR rear adjustable bar has rates that are 46/70/98% stiffer than the 1LE rear bar, which means anywhere from ~66%-230% stiffer than your stock bar. IMO, that's way too big a jump since you can't change the front to go along with it.

The very first thing you should do is make sure you've maxed out front and rear camber and that you're running zero toe at both ends. It sounds like you've thought of that already though. Also, I'm hoping you have a bought a set of 19" wheels and Falken RT660 tires in 245/35/19 front and 265/35/19 rear (possibly the 275/30/19 is worth trying on the back in this situation). Those are easily the fastest tires legal for Street classes that won't be destroyed on your car in a few runs. Don't waste a bunch of money on the lightest, fanciest forged wheels: a $1400 set of MRRs, Apexes, or Forgestars will do just fine.

Finally...I hadn't even considered that good performance struts and shocks may not exist for a Street class Camaro! Unless you have Magride on your SS, that's...a really serious problem. Other than tires, shocks are probably the biggest improvement you can make. And if you experiment with bigger rear swaybars, adjustable shocks will be really important to help keep the car stable in offsets and slaloms (more front damping stiffness). For that matter, you could keep your current rear bar and just try stiffer rear damping rates to dial out understeer on corner entry. In the rear, I don't know why you couldn't run the shocks from a coilover kit and just omit the spring and perch while retaining the stock spring. That's legal. For the front, I don't know of a strut that allows the use of the stock spring and perch. But I know one thing: I'd get on the phone with Vorshlag and Strano and I would beg, borrow, or steal a way to get good adjustable damping on both ends of the car if I were you! If there's no way to run anything better than your stock dampers, you're ****ed. Pure and simple. There has to be an option or two out there. Find out what nationally competitive FS Camaro guys are/were running for dampers.

Which brings us to the bad news. I don't know any other way to break this to you other than to be brutally honest: the non-1LE SS Camaro is hopelessly outgunned in F Street. Currently, the E90 M3 is way faster and nobody good will compete in anything else at the national level. That's why the class is dying. Same goes for the Mustang GT, btw. And next year, things may get worse because SCCA may move the 1LE and GT350/PP2/Mach1 into F Street to save the class. No matter what you do to the car within class rules, you're always going to be at a major disadvantage to several other cars in class. If I were in your shoes, I'd bail on F Street and move to CAM-C, where you could run way wider wheels/tires, aftermarket coilovers with any spring rates you want and any swaybars you want, along with camber plates and (maybe) an aftermarket diff. A local friend has done just that with his 2017 (minus the coilovers - he has the Magride shocks) and I co-drove it with him for one local event. I believe it is a bit faster than my B Street 1LE. I know this isn't what you asked about, but it's important to ask oneself whether it makes sense to throw money and time at a non-1LE SS for F Street at this point. Maybe you've thought this all through and have your reasons, which is of course fine. I'd just be remiss if I didn't make sure you have this perspective.

*Roll doesn't cause weight transfer, and weight transfer is bad for grip anyway; so please try to forget the stuff written above about roll being good!

[VR Baron]

Originally Posted by Msquared

Wow, there's some whacky advice and "facts" being given out in this thread so far! I think some people here aren't quite sure how suspension dynamics actually work. Let's hit "reset" and start over with answering your question.

Truly, oversteer is not what you're looking for because it's really slow. However, most people really don't mean they want the rear end to actually lose grip first in a turn, and I suspect you don't either. If you need to cancel out understeer in your car (i.e. get closer to neutral), a stiffer rear swaybar will accomplish that. But you don't want to go too far or the car will get slow and difficult to drive near the limit - not good. The others aren't wrong when they say that too much rear roll stiffness (be it from swaybar or springs) kills your ability to put down power). You definitely should not try a softer front bar! That's ridiculous for several reasons, but mainly you need to limit your car's roll* during cornering as much as possible, so a softer front bar is the wrong way to go.

But here are some suggestions for increasing your rear roll stiffness, including the adjustable bars you actually asked about (be patient and we'll get there!):

• Believe it or not, just changing the rear "D" bushings that mount the bar to the frame to harder urethane will stiffen the stock bar's effective rate. That's a super cheap and easy thing to try.
• I think the next stiffest (compared to stock) rear bar you could get would be the SS 1LE (FE4) bar. If you can get that part cheap, you could start there. It's not adjustable, I know, but it is stiffer than your stock rear bar. And with rear bar rate increases, sometimes a little goes a long way. The next stiffest is the BMR non-adjustable rear bar, which is supposed to be 16% stiffer than the 1LE bar. But I'd probably skip that in favor of what's next:
• The softest adjustable rear bar I know of is the Hotchkiss. At its softest setting it is 25% stiffer than the 1LE bar. The medium setting is 35% more and the stiffest setting is 50% more. Keep in mind that even at its softest setting, it will be quite a bit stiffer than your stock rear bar: start with the softest setting for sure. But this is why I'd start with the 1LE rear bar and see how that works. Finally, the BMR rear adjustable bar has rates that are 46/70/98% stiffer than the 1LE rear bar, which means anywhere from ~66%-230% stiffer than your stock bar. IMO, that's way too big a jump since you can't change the front to go along with it.

The very first thing you should do is make sure you've maxed out front and rear camber and that you're running zero toe at both ends. It sounds like you've thought of that already though. Also, I'm hoping you have a bought a set of 19" wheels and Falken RT660 tires in 245/35/19 front and 265/35/19 rear (possibly the 275/30/19 is worth trying on the back in this situation). Those are easily the fastest tires legal for Street classes that won't be destroyed on your car in a few runs. Don't waste a bunch of money on the lightest, fanciest forged wheels: a $1400 set of MRRs, Apexes, or Forgestars will do just fine.

Finally...I hadn't even considered that good performance struts and shocks may not exist for a Street class Camaro! Unless you have Magride on your SS, that's...a really serious problem. Other than tires, shocks are probably the biggest improvement you can make. And if you experiment with bigger rear swaybars, adjustable shocks will be really important to help keep the car stable in offsets and slaloms (more front damping stiffness). For that matter, you could keep your current rear bar and just try stiffer rear damping rates to dial out understeer on corner entry. In the rear, I don't know why you couldn't run the shocks from a coilover kit and just omit the spring and perch while retaining the stock spring. That's legal. For the front, I don't know of a strut that allows the use of the stock spring and perch. But I know one thing: I'd get on the phone with Vorshlag and Strano and I would beg, borrow, or steal a way to get good adjustable damping on both ends of the car if I were you! If there's no way to run anything better than your stock dampers, you're ****ed. Pure and simple. There has to be an option or two out there. Find out what nationally competitive FS Camaro guys are/were running for dampers.

Which brings us to the bad news. I don't know any other way to break this to you other than to be brutally honest: the non-1LE SS Camaro is hopelessly outgunned in F Street. Currently, the E90 M3 is way faster and nobody good will compete in anything else at the national level. That's why the class is dying. Same goes for the Mustang GT, btw. And next year, things may get worse because SCCA may move the 1LE and GT350/PP2/Mach1 into F Street to save the class. No matter what you do to the car within class rules, you're always going to be at a major disadvantage to several other cars in class. If I were in your shoes, I'd bail on F Street and move to CAM-C, where you could run way wider wheels/tires, aftermarket coilovers with any spring rates you want and any swaybars you want, along with camber plates and (maybe) an aftermarket diff. A local friend has done just that with his 2017 (minus the coilovers - he has the Magride shocks) and I co-drove it with him for one local event. I believe it is a bit faster than my B Street 1LE. I know this isn't what you asked about, but it's important to ask oneself whether it makes sense to throw money and time at a non-1LE SS for F Street at this point. Maybe you've thought this all through and have your reasons, which is of course fine. I'd just be remiss if I didn't make sure you have this perspective.

*Roll doesn't cause weight transfer, and weight transfer is bad for grip anyway; so please try to forget the stuff written above about roll being good!

What was wacky about advice? No one said anything about roll transferring weight. And the rest is applicable to autocross. And as stated over or understeer is a mater of driving preferences . You do have to drive better with oversteer. I stated just a bit where the rear is controlled on exit at worst case. You have to be careful with it for sure.Understeer and driving technique is different.
But it’s academic. The OP didn’t appreciate any input we gave and made up his mind on what he wants already. He just wanted us to tell him what bar to get for his stock car, though later he told us it wasn’t really stock.

[Msquared]

Originally Posted by VR Baron

What was wacky about advice?

Well, I was trying to avoid calling anyone out in particular. But since you asked...

No one said anything about roll transferring weight.

Ahem:

...the car can roll more to get weight onto the tire to stick.

You wrote that. It's just wrong. Roll doesn't cause weight transfer - the lateral acceleration that causes weight transfer (due to the CG being above ground) also causes roll (if the roll center is below the CG, as it is on most cars). And weight transfer is universally undesirable for grip on dry pavement in turning or braking. The more a tire is loaded, the lower its coefficient of grip becomes. Therefore the most grip you can have in a car is when all four tires are equally loaded. That's specifically why we try to lower CGs, widen wheelbases, and use wider wheels/tires. If weight transfer were a good thing, we would all be trying to do the opposite of those things!

Moving on:

A stiffer bar may overwhelm your smaller less grippy tires. Stiffer bars need stiffer tires and the rest to work best.

I don't know for sure what you mean here. Maybe sidewall stiffness? Tires have all different types of construction, and I don't know of any research that says a stiffer swaybar works better with tires that have stiffer sidewalls. That just doesn't make sense. There is possibly an argument that higher wheel rates work better with gripper tires...if you assume that the car's current lean angle at the cornering is optimal and you want to preserve that angle while upgrading tires. But that's silly: pretty much no stock production car is in danger of having too little lean angle, and reducing their lean angle is almost always a good thing for cornering performance.

Generally softer to a point grips better...

No, that is simply not true for almost any production car, and it certainly is not true of a regular SS. If you don't believe me, then please take a look at what Chevy did for the 1LE when it wanted to make the SS faster: stiffer springs, swaybars, and damping rates are a big part of that package. We could put the exact same wheels and tires on a stock SS and a stock 1LE and the 1LE would still be much faster. Don't confuse this with a car that relies heavily on aero downforce for grip, where ultra-stiff springs and dampers are required to maintain proper ride height. Those cars often have way stiffer wheel rates than would be desirable in low-speed corners, but that's because the car's loading can increase two or three times when it's at high speed (think F1 or LMP cars) and they have to choose rates for that.

Stiffer tires can take more bar and won’t slide but you have to drive harder and steer faster to make a stiffer bar work.And stickier tires to.

Again, no. I don't know what you mean by "drive harder." Isn't the whole point of this to drive at the limits of grip in all directions of the friction circle? If you aren't driving that hard, then why bother? If you mean using more aggressive/abrupt inputs, I would disagree...especially when going to a stiffer rear setup. Such a setup will entail less abrupt inputs if all else on the car remains equal, because otherwise you'll risk unsticking the rear tires.

Mostly bigger bars and stiffer everything are used for road course prepped car for higher speeds. Autocross wants softer shocks and bars, to a degree.

Again, no. Nobody - and I mean nobody - is modifying stock cars for autocross by installing softer springs, swaybars, or dampers. That's a pretty silly statement if you think about it.

The aftermarket bars are pretty stiff, sure the companies design it for the ss but I think it’s basically for street driving to make the car feel better and more responsive, not best grip.

To some extent, I agree with this. You can see that in what I wrote about the various choices. While think the OP can probably use a stiffer rear bar to improve his car up to a point, I definitely think the stiffest option is too stiff and will likely make the car slower.

And the rest is applicable to autocross. And as stated over or understeer is a mater of driving preferences .

To a small degree, this is true. But if you go back to my statement that a car's best grip is when the tires are equally loaded, you'll see that neutral is the theoretical ideal for a skidpad. The problem there is that a car has to also brake and accelerate while turning quite often - especially in an autocross. So the best skidpad setup is usually going to feel like oversteer in an autocross run. For a given car on a given course on a given day, there is one specific balance between fore and aft grip that will give the best time if a computer is driving the car. The driver's job is to get as close to that balance and driving performance as possible. But it's likely that a stock SS is balanced toward too much understeer for any driver to go his fastest (I haven't driven a stock one, so I can't say for sure). If so, then a stiffer rear swaybar will improve the overall grip of the car by shifting more grip to the front (i.e. by shifting more of the overall bad weight transfer to the rear).

But it’s academic. The OP didn’t appreciate any input we gave and made up his mind on what he wants already. He just wanted us to tell him what bar to get for his stock car, though later he told us it wasn’t really stock.

I don't see it that way. He's either already upgraded the car within the Street rule set or he's in the process of it, and he asked for recommendations for an adjustable rear swaybar to reduce understeer. Basically, everybody before me told him not to change bars at all, change to softer bars and shocks, do things that aren't allowed in his class (e.g. wider front wheels/tires), or told him to do other things to go faster like get stickier tires and an aggressive alignment. None of those were helpful answers for various reasons and they didn't answer his question at all.

[VR Baron]

Originally Posted by Msquared

Well, I was trying to avoid calling anyone out in particular. But since you asked...

Ahem:

You wrote that. It's just wrong. Roll doesn't cause weight transfer - the lateral acceleration that causes weight transfer (due to the CG being above ground) also causes roll (if the roll center is below the CG, as it is on most cars). And weight transfer is universally undesirable for grip on dry pavement in turning or braking. The more a tire is loaded, the lower its coefficient of grip becomes. Therefore the most grip you can have in a car is when all four tires are equally loaded. That's specifically why we try to lower CGs, widen wheelbases, and use wider wheels/tires. If weight transfer were a good thing, we would all be trying to do the opposite of those things!

Moving on:

I don't know for sure what you mean here. Maybe sidewall stiffness? Tires have all different types of construction, and I don't know of any research that says a stiffer swaybar works better with tires that have stiffer sidewalls. That just doesn't make sense. There is possibly an argument that higher wheel rates work better with gripper tires...if you assume that the car's current lean angle at the cornering is optimal and you want to preserve that angle while upgrading tires. But that's silly: pretty much no stock production car is in danger of having too little lean angle, and reducing their lean angle is almost always a good thing for cornering performance.


No, that is simply not true for almost any production car, and it certainly is not true of a regular SS. If you don't believe me, then please take a look at what Chevy did for the 1LE when it wanted to make the SS faster: stiffer springs, swaybars, and damping rates are a big part of that package. We could put the exact same wheels and tires on a stock SS and a stock 1LE and the 1LE would still be much faster. Don't confuse this with a car that relies heavily on aero downforce for grip, where ultra-stiff springs and dampers are required to maintain proper ride height. Those cars often have way stiffer wheel rates than would be desirable in low-speed corners, but that's because the car's loading can increase two or three times when it's at high speed (think F1 or LMP cars) and they have to choose rates for that.


Again, no. I don't know what you mean by "drive harder." Isn't the whole point of this to drive at the limits of grip in all directions of the friction circle? If you aren't driving that hard, then why bother? If you mean using more aggressive/abrupt inputs, I would disagree...especially when going to a stiffer rear setup. Such a setup will entail less abrupt inputs if all else on the car remains equal, because otherwise you'll risk unsticking the rear tires.


Again, no. Nobody - and I mean nobody - is modifying stock cars for autocross by installing softer springs, swaybars, or dampers. That's a pretty silly statement if you think about it.


To some extent, I agree with this. You can see that in what I wrote about the various choices. While think the OP can probably use a stiffer rear bar to improve his car up to a point, I definitely think the stiffest option is too stiff and will likely make the car slower.


To a small degree, this is true. But if you go back to my statement that a car's best grip is when the tires are equally loaded, you'll see that neutral is the theoretical ideal for a skidpad. The problem there is that a car has to also brake and accelerate while turning quite often - especially in an autocross. So the best skidpad setup is usually going to feel like oversteer in an autocross run. For a given car on a given course on a given day, there is one specific balance between fore and aft grip that will give the best time if a computer is driving the car. The driver's job is to get as close to that balance and driving performance as possible. But it's likely that a stock SS is balanced toward too much understeer for any driver to go his fastest (I haven't driven a stock one, so I can't say for sure). If so, then a stiffer rear swaybar will improve the overall grip of the car by shifting more grip to the front (i.e. by shifting more of the overall bad weight transfer to the rear).


I don't see it that way. He's either already upgraded the car within the Street rule set or he's in the process of it, and he asked for recommendations for an adjustable rear swaybar to reduce understeer. Basically, everybody before me told him not to change bars at all, change to softer bars and shocks, do things that aren't allowed in his class (e.g. wider front wheels/tires), or told him to do other things to go faster like get stickier tires and an aggressive alignment. None of those were helpful answers for various reasons and they didn't answer his question at all.

Wow, a lot of book theory. And opinion. And truths.Maybe not take things I say out of context, read all I said and think a bit on it. I am not going to rebut all you wrote, but as an example the roll comment I said “to an extent”. In autocross that is true. And takes some experiments and trial and error.For example I have to run on a lousy grip surface. Shocks springs and bars, to keep it simple need to have mostly a medium stiffness or it doesn’t grip as well. Scca folks say same .This is ten years of experience on said surface. I didn’t say get softer springs or get more roll then a stock ss has . Read what he first posted. STOCK Camaro. Later after we are trying to give some help based on that he finally, rudely, tells us what he has done. But in his opinion tires and track alignment is not a performance mod. At that point he knows what he wants, sway bars and which brand. That’s it. You writing a novel on good input is not what he wants. I hope he takes our input to heart but doubt who knows. I have been there done that on a fifth gen ss and you do have to change it all, and correctly. But since he can’t change much as you point out a bar is what he is looking at for now. Hopefully he picks the right one for his situation.He has to get some experience which he doesn’t have and see what works for him, how his car reacts and the quality of the surface he is driving on. I hope the bigger rear bar helps.So basically I was talking in general form and some of what I wrote is as said, experiences from other drivers on this forum and directly from some in responses here.

Anyway, we can go on and on as there is a lot to the “black art” of handling

[Msquared]

Originally Posted by VR Baron

Wow, a lot of book theory. And opinion. And truths.Maybe not take things I say out of context, read all I said and think a bit on it.

I've already done that. I didn't take anything out of context. Calling something "book theory" isn't the dismissal you think it is: it's in a book for a good reason. It also happens to work in practice as well. There was no opinion in anything I wrote.

I am not going to rebut all you wrote, but as an example the roll comment I said “to an extent”. In autocross that is true. And takes some experiments and trial and error. For example I have to run on a lousy grip surface. Shocks springs and bars, to keep it simple need to have mostly a medium stiffness or it doesn’t grip as well.

I don't know what "medium stiffness" means. Show me the case where an otherwise stock car went faster in Street class autocross competition with a smaller-than-stock swaybar. Is it possible to modify a car with too much wheel rate? Sure it is. But we're starting with an SS on stock springs and swaybars: surely you'd agree that this car comes with much softer springs and swaybars than would be ideal for any track or autocross event? How in the world could more roll be better for autocross times?! It can't.

Read what he first posted. STOCK Camaro.

I think it was pretty clear that he was targeting SCCA's F Street class (used to be called Stock), and we all know the parameters there. Most people would understand that a car on different tires and with a different alignment (but not camber plates or other mods to increase alignment) is still "stock." To take exception to that is being kind of petty. He didn't ask about tire or alignment recommendations - he asked about aftermarket adjustable swaybars.

You writing a novel on good input is not what he wants. I hope he takes our input to heart but doubt who knows.

I gave him a bullet-pointed list of his options for increasing rear swaybar rates, including the relative stiffness values at various settings, and which ones I would recommend starting with. I'm pretty sure my answer was right on the nail. BTW, you do understand that buried in your reply was agreement with me that he should try a stiffer FE4 rear bar, right? OTOH, if he'd followed the rest of the advice you others gave, he'd get a smaller rear bar for more roll, wider wheels and tires that are illegal for his class and cost $4000 because they are uber-light, and tires that are no longer in production and no longer the fastest option.

Anyway, we can go on and on as there is a lot to the “black art” of handling

Handling and speed is not a black art. It's all physics and - especially with enough resources and knowledge - highly simulatable and predictable.