the only change that i could feel on the race track was that with the 14mm rear bar
i had to wait until the ute was completely settled (sitting flat) before i applied any power.
any slight (and i mean slight) bit of acceleration would result in the inside rear wheel spinning (even with a good lsd)

once i removed the rear bar i was able to apply the majority of the utes power once i could see the corner exit
with good exit grip and speed. infact if i apply too much it will power oversteer,
which tells me that my rears are both well planted as the lsd isnt giving up one the inside wheel anymore

no difference in body roll could be felt with & without the bar
nor did it effect the way the front behaved

i guess the most important thing to note here is that my findings
are when cornering on the absolute limit of my tyres (r-spec) on a racetrack

so my experiences will be irrelevant to most on this forum

I'm sure the perfect Ute set up is not what the coupe set up would be.

On our D-Sports Racer the car was somthing like 76 inches wide, the pick up points for the left and right suspension were only about 18 inches apart , so as you can imagine the control arms were long and this resulted in the car running no sway bars at all (as I managed a class lap record with it the lack of sway bars didn't seem to matter).

On a MX-5 Miata show room stocker I once tried some bigger sway bars at an autocross and while the bars helped the cornering and turn in it also caused the inside rear wheel to spin. The solution would be a limited slip diff, not going back to the smaller bar but the diff wasn't legal in for the road racing class ............so if I could have legally fitted bigger bars the laps times would have been slower due to the wheel spin.

I won't do the explanation justice but the whole idea behind sway bars is that the grip level for the pair of wheels (front or back) is increased by limiting excessive roll / weight transfer, now you can overdue this. All those cool pictures of 911's cornering on three wheels............... a softer bar would keep all the wheels on the ground. For the hotchkiss (sp) rear axle the principles are the same, the trick is having enough wheel travel in droop so that the inside wheel isn't being lifted off the ground due to limited travel. In some cases a car will be faster with no rear bar, you just have to test it.............when it pours rain, if it's a race day I will disconnect both bars on my car as they are to stiff.............understeers in and can't put power donw on exit..............for a track day I'm to lazy to be bothered.



For the sake of this thread a rear bar might keep the car off the bump stops which then would make the lack of a LSD a problem. I also wonder what the weight distribution is on a standard UTE and what sort of ride height difference front to rear is needed to get thing set up well. I tend to favor softer springs in conjunction with sway bars, the softer springs in the rear would allow a little more rearward weight transfer and the sway bar would limit the excessive roll caused by the softer spring.

Also Ange brings up a good point R compound race rubber tire construction will have a big effect on how the car handles as they generally have a stiffer sidewall then street tires.

Tom

Ange,
Just been looking at your youtube vid.
Have you been tampering with your diff as it looks very much as if you are running a touch of negative camber there?This is turning into a very informative thread....
Dave

nah no neg on the rear, although it would be nice

im running -2deg on the front

Two things (possibly one) I noticed on the video in sports while the rear seemed to be on the verge of pogoing, the suspension also tracked very well over the curbs. I'm also curious if you've tried different tire/wheel combo........wondering what a more compliant tire might do?

Now Ange whgile it was fun to see someone else bombing round with Miata / MX5s but that video is rather dangerous!!!!! As a two stroke fanatic watching the video and hearing the Ba-iiiinnng downshifts is dangerous and could cause me to do a rotary conversion...................this coupled with listening to the screaming RX8's in car during Grand-Am telecasts on US TV reminds me to much of my 1 2 5 Road Race bike.............which was waaaaaay fun.

OK back on topic.


Tom