swaussie

I have the 3 hole adjustable swaybar but cant find any info on this.

Am I right in thinking that the closest hole to the bar gives more torsion strength and the hole furtherst from the bar is the softest setting?

ozzy

Yes.

tweenierob

What effect do the different holes have on the handling characteristics?

Cheers

Rob

911

I have this bar on my hill climb Sti v3.
Spent a great morning on a (real) private test track trying the roll bar settings (holes) and damper positions (I have AVO struts)

Tries all 3 holes, and concluded that the best hill climb setting is the 'hardest hole' (closest to the bushes)
However, you do loose a degree of suppleness in corners with a camber, ie the car will lift an inside rear wheel by about 75mm off the deck.
I moved back to the middle hole mid last year and things were better overall.
Most noticable was the effect of the damping rate to the springs on general handling.

Max soft and max hard gave a very poor result, and I ended up with front 70% hard, rear 50% hard, but spring rates come into play then!

Should say that I have the matching Whiteline front bar, fixed rate, and a lot of other tweeks to the suspension and a radical geometry....

911

dowser

For the more normal driver a stiffer rear bar will give more front end bite on turn in. Helps with understeer on roundabout entries for example (by forcing weight transfer to occur over the front wheels). Equally helps you to spin the car - nothing comes for free

Would be my first handling mod on a standard car intended for primarily road use. Note that on track I had issues with overheating the front tyres (mostly due to excessive corner entry speeds - ie; bad driving ) and had to fit an uprated front bar to balance things out.

Richard

Scott: Happy New year! You gonna' send me your CV?

ozzy

There's two Whiteline adjustable rear ARB's.

First is a 22mm bar
Second is a 24mm bar

Graham,

Do you have the 22mm or the 24mm bar ?? I know you said you have the 22mm front bar (non adjustable), just wondering now if you matched this to 22mm bar (middle setting = 22mm) or a 24mm bar (middle setting = 24mm).

Stefan

911

Mine are 22mm bars.
Totally agree with Dowser, this is the first mod to any Impreza, and the stiffest setting is 'better' than the middle, BUT, when racing, loosing traction in a bend due to wheel lift looses time = that EVO wins again.
I traded a bit on the chassis to gain in traction and 'won' about 0.5 sec on a 50 second hill climb, a result to die for!

TBH, there seemed little to difference to notice on the road, but I actually don't drive hard on the road (!) as it's all saved for that bloody EVO (460 bhp)

I did weld the rear bar wriggly tin mounts with a steel web to stiffen it all, a mod offered by Whiteline/MRT but at a silly cost.

Remember hill climbing is like driving very very hard down an English country lane where the surface is smooth but un-even!

Dowser, my short CV is Drag racing in the 70's, Hot Rods in the 70/80's and hill climbs from 1992 on.....Started too old and in a bloody 911!



911

speedydaveb

iTrader: (1)

Does anyone know how the non-adjustable rear ARB compares to the adjustable one, i.e. is a 22mm non-adjustable the same as the adjustable in the middle setting?
If someone could measure from the middle hole to the pivot point I could check it against mine.
Thanks in advance.

swaussie

I just did some testing with the rear sway bar set on the softest setting and then the hardest. Night and day if you compare handling feel and characteristics. On the hardest setting it feels as tight as a nuns nasty in the rear and turn in is greatly improved. It sits flat on the road but it does make the frount feel soft and "rubbery", almost like you can feel the car flexing in the middle, a bit oversteery as well but I learnt to drive in a rear wheel drive car and that feels normal to me . On softest setting it feels a bit more balanced but doesnt seem to inspire a lot of confidence with feel. It gives more understeer as well which I am told is a good thing for us lousy drivers

I am now wondering about fitting a heavy duty swaybar to the frount to balance it out but am not sure if it will go back to wanting to understeer?

I agree with the above comments about it being the first mod to make to a new age STi (cant speak for the older impreza's), it helps immensly with the understeer of a standard STi.

911

I'm puzzled why many fit only the rear bar, and not the front at the same time.
On the www.whiteline.com.au site they do lots of tech discussion/articles, and never do they fit the rear only.

I think you will find even deeper 'feel' in the car with the front on.

Speedy: tomorrow evening I will measure mine and post on this thread, too late now!

911

swaussie

I originally fitted the sway bar to the back to counteract the understeer my car had as standard. Set to the medium setting it made the car very neutral to drive and with the standard STi7 suspension was perfect for the car. I recently fitted a set of coilovers and found that the hardest setting on the rear bar now gives superb rear end handling but, as you suggest, now the frount also needs a heavier bar to match the rear.

superstring

Hey 911, I've been meaning to ask you about this for awhile and now seems as good an opportunity as any

The reason, I think, that many people fit the rear bar only is it's a quick (and cheap) fix for the Scooby's inherent understeer. From what you've described in this thread and previous ones, your V3 handles in a very neutral fashion. This has always surprised me! Because, I would have thought that by fitting the bigger front bar as well as the rear, while you certainly would have made the car corner flatter, it would have retained its' original handling balance, ie rather pronounced understeer. I've theorized in my own mind that it's the other mods you've made, along with the bars, that have produced such a neutral car.

Please don't misunderstand. I'm not saying you did the wrong thing by going with the bigger front bar, far from it. It just seems to me that if you'd ONLY changed the front and rear bars, the car would be cornering flatter but would still be understeering.

John

911

John, always happy to be questioned and doubted!

Please see my chassis as a total package; the chassis has EVERY Whiteline mod on it including the settings, BUT, it has the MRT top mounts in the front.
This is significant, because the mounts allow 2 x the factory caster, and the dynamic caster in a turn increases neg camber as you turn in. The loaded front wheel is kept very flat to the road despite a 'degree' of roll (it's those roll bars in front again).

The package is carefully tuned (by Whiteline) and this is why I followed every move they told me to, their Tech Help Line is really good.

If you take a fragment of info from here, and there, and etc.. the jigsaw does not make a full picture as you try to put it all together.
I seriously hill climb my car, and the tracks have trees and barriers just 3 or 4 feet away when you are at 10:10ths; trust and confidence in the car's behaviour is needed

Although the Whiteline site is hard to 'navigate' it is worth the effort.

Not sure if this chat is helpful, but there it is!

Happy to help,

911.

superstring

Not doubting you at all, 911! Your reply only confirms my suspicions.

The point I was trying to make is that fitting the front bar as well as the rear necessitates the extra mods to address the understeer situation. Many people (if not most) won't want to go the "extra mile" that you have, therefore fitting the rear bar alone is the ticket.


Not only helpful, but fun!

Cheers!

martinl

I have a wr1 which quick enough, well till the warranty runs out, so I'm going to work on the handling.
Whiteline=
anti-lift kit
steering column bushes
front/rear droplinks
front/rear sway bars.
Then laser set up.

Don't you just love credit cards?????

911

Yep, in love for up to a month.................

Superstring:
Take your point. Because my car is a semi competion car I tend to go the full 9 yards searching for the max.
I'm good at using Credit Cards too (wife agrees..)

911

swaussie

I was tossing up whether to order a 24mm bar for the frount or the 22mm. From what I understand, superstrings reasoning is pretty solid. If I just added 24 or 22mm bars frount and rear, I would still have understeer. I reasoned that if I had a 24mm on the back and a 22 on the frount, I would have flatter handling but the tendancy to understeer would still be lessened.

911, with your experience, how does the handling of your car change with changing weather conditions? I would assume that I will have less wet weather grip due to more force being added to the outside tyres, but is this offset by having the car flatter on the road and therefor more road contact from the inside tyres?

Wurzel

iTrader: (1)

I have the uprated front and rear ARB on my MY00 aswell as a front strutbrace and coilover suspension and my car handles like a dream, I have the rear set on the middle hole, when I first fitted it I had it on the hardest setting as I didn't know any different and found the back end to be a bit keen on sliding around, maybe I was not expecting this or used to it but it was unnerving at the time, maybe I will switch back to it and see what happens.

swaussie

with the extra weight in the new age cars should you also compensate by having the larger size bars?

TARManiAC

I also have a new age (01) WRX and I´m thinking of doing some suspension changes to make it handle better for track days. I was thinking about:

Perrin front 22mm arb (2 holes adjustable)
Perrin rear 22mm arb (3 holes adjustable)
Perrin front and rear droplinks
KYB AGX dampers (already have Eibachs springs)
Camberbolts front and rear
steering rack bushes

Was also thinking about antilift kit, but read somewhere that it will make the car dive more under heavy braking which I don´t want. (Have the Godspeed 335mm brake kit, so already a lot of brake dive).

what size is the standard arb´s on the MY01?

What do you guys think?

martinl

Checkout the whiteline web site.

911

Swassie, sorry, havn't been following this thread too well!

In the wet (same tyres as dry days) I can hill climb in competition just 4 seconds slower than in the dry, ie a 60 second hill climb is 64 in the wet. Most find a 7 second difference. The car actually feels the same!
I am no rain master, too scared of hitting the trees, but that is the point of the mods; confidence in the wet!

If you want to kill understeer the roll bars wont do it alone. You will need to get radical with the front top mounts!
I have MRT top mounts which double the positive caster in the front, bit like an ALK really but far more extreme.

Worth thinking about.

911

chrome

sure lots more positive castor eats tyres?
(ok- maybe not such a problem in hill climber, but for road?)

911

Nope!
Straight ahead driving the wheels are affected by static negative (or positive) camber.
When you turn into a bend the extra positive caster leans the loaded wheel to maintain the wheel square to the road.

My soft Kumho's have passed 2 mot's now without issue and the 'as new' tread depth is 30% that of a new 'normal' road tyre.

Graham.

chrome

nice

911

Yes, but it still cost £1100 diy to get it done.
Is ANYTHING cheap for an Impreza?

911

TARManiAC

Any thoughts on the Perrin stuff, camber bolts, steering rack bushes and KYB AGXs. And what about ALK and brake diving?

911

Don't know Perrin.
Camber bolts essential IMHO
Rack bushes: got them, doubt they are worth it
ALK: got that too. Braking great, full bore accelleration great too! Save some $$, buy the MRT top mounts instead, they do a better job in several ways.
911

Erik

Perrin is Whiteline ALK like but it comes with rose joint not poly bushing

911

Do they have a web site Erik?
911