After having a gander round members machines, i have found that some members have rear sway bars and some have front and rear sway bars.

a. what handling gains do i get from a rear sway bar?

and

b. whats would be the difference in handling comparing a rear sway bar VS a front and rear sway bar?

Cheers. JM

a big thick rear sway bar promotes oversteer which is good!

I see that you have a TF.

Early on the Magna 3rd gen cars did not have rear sway bars,
They were first fitted to the Sports Models.

When the TL & TW came out these all had rear bars.

Reason is that a FWD car will naturally understeer, i.e. go wide in a corner.

Fitting a sufficiently strong rear bar changes the way that the cornering forces are fed into the tyres.
As standard the FWD version leans over to the outside of the corner, most of the force then is being dealt with by the outside front tyre.
You then, naturally, wind on a bit more steering to deal with this.

With a nice thick rear bar, the as the car rolls the effect of the bar is to reduce the weight transfer forward to the outside front tyre.
Just go have a look at some of the sportier FWD European imports to see the sizes that they use.
I have an AWD, as standard the TJ bar was way too small, even Mitsubishi admitted this as the bar size was increased in the last TL and TW variants.

I personally believe that this is the first handling improvement that you should make.
Before the AWD I had a KJ Touring wagon, manual of course. Did the rear bar and put a smile on my face with the difference.

Conclusion, grab phone or email Possie to order a bar kit for your car.
Gerry.

wow cheers mate, great write up!

looks like the rear bar does most of the work. how would the front sway bar (with a rear sway) alter that again? and is the front sway necessary?

wow cheers mate, great write up!

looks like the rear bar does most of the work. how would the front sway bar (with a rear sway) alter that again? and is the front sway necessary?

That, apart from Barry's kits, is probably one of the most debated topics around lol

I have one (front sway bar)... and I think it helps. The front end sat 'flatter' when cornering in a spirited way. It won't knock a huge amount of time off around the race track but it does feel nicer to drive. If you only every drive at sedate speeds, I wouldn't bother.

Edit: I only have the factory rear sway bar so can't vouch for what the 2 upgraded bars would be like together.

front = understere which is bad IIRC

ahk.

so in general what your saying is that the front sway bar will create understeer and the rear sway bar will create overstear?

with both, they'd be canceling each other out?

Sort of hijack; if I went to the wrecker and came across a Magna with a sway bar, would it be safe to remove and fit to my sway bar less TF? It would (of course) depend on the state of the car (wouldn't want one off a car that has clearly had bashed up the backside).

I know they are around $220 - $250 to buy new but one ex wrecker might be $100 or less. But the quesiton is would it be safe?

Regards, Tony

I have a custom 1 of 25 made whiteline 28mm rear sway bar and i can say i love it, the car handles so much more better around corners and stays much flatter in corners.

In answer to TWW (Hi!),

The vast majority of 3rd Gen Magna/Verada were not fitted with a factory rear sway bar. This means they do not have the fitting points built onto the car which a sway bar needs to attach to.

I have a TJ Sports which came with a factory rear sway bar (aka anti-sway bar, aka torsion bar etc). This vehicle has mounting points built onto the rear trailing arms, and has really nifty-looking little double-ball-joint (one at each end) linkages which join the rear suspension trailing arms to the sway bar.

My KJ Verada had no rear sway bar as standard. I needed to buy a Whiteline rear sway bar - BUT not ONLY the bar - I had to make sure I bought a kit with the FITTINGS to attach this bar to a car with no built-in fitting points. This means bolt a few brackets here and there, and the linkages which attach the sway bar to the rear suspension trailing arms look very ordinary compared to the factory version as fitted to my Sports.

Check out Wikipedia - search "sway bar / anti-sway bar /torsion bar" its quite a good article and explains how this item works on a vehicle.

If you find a wreck with a factory bar in good order, its unlikely to fit your car - or you will need to fabricate a way to make it fit. You MIGHT find a wreck with a bolt-on after-market rear sway bar - less common I'd bet......

Note also, that after-market suspension companies sell bars which are an alternative to existing factory bars (usually a thicker/stiffer bar than factory, and usually just the sway bar itself), as well as bars which are designed to be added to cars which originally had none (the bar itself, PLUS fittings to graft it onto car).

BTW, my Whiteline bar fitted to the KJ is hitting on the suspension, probably the cross-member..... I'm off to the local Pedders tomorrow morning, to see if they can check my install (I did it myself). Other members in here have had different fittings and alternative bars supplied by Whiteline to avoid the bar hitting other parts under the car..... hope they come to the party in my case as well. I rang Whiteline today, they do not check intalls etc themselves, and it was they who suggested that I take it to Pedders. Wish me luck!!

the stiffer the bar the more understeer it promotes on the front of the car especially under heavy load, such as hard on the brakes and coming into a corner. On the other hand powering out of a corner with reducing steering position helps promote steering responsiviness under full load (exiting a corner, post apex)

All my experience on thicker/thinner hollow/ solid sway bars is from rear wheel drive platform. Grip driving requires a thicker front bar, and while the back can usually do with an upgrade in size its only marginal when comapred to the front.

The hardest part of it all is most people when it comes to mods like this never do it alone, its usually with a strut-bar or upgrade shocks and struts and or bushes, which will kind of skew the argument.

i did this mod alone with no other changes. Must say that it was a massive improvement going from not having a sway bar at all to having a whiteline adjustable bar. Car was much more resistant to understeer when going into a corner hard. Tail would quite happily follow the front.

Among other suspension improvements, the Whiteline adj rear bar made a heck of a stabilising effect. Fully recommend it.
Note, the car then becomes more agile, so bit of adjusting in driving is required of course.

the stiffer the bar the more understeer it promotes on the front of the car especially under heavy load, such as hard on the brakes and coming into a corner.

In theory a stiffer front bar produces more understeer, in practice it REDUCES it in our magnas, in my experience on the track. The reason for this is when we are talking about under-sprung family cars, under hard cornering they have a tendency to 'fall over' over onto the outside front tyre, producing understeer as the tyre is rolled on its sidewall. A bigger front swaybar adds roll resistance, which slightly reduces the 'falling over' effect, and helps improve front-end grip a little.

Now that my front spring rate is about triple that of the factory rate, and I have more than enough roll resistance to counteract the 'falling over' effect, I suspect downsizing my front swaybar would in fact possibly dial in more oversteer. But when I was tracking the car with King Lows, I feel adding a bigger front bar was actually reducing understeer, not adding to it.

In conclusion IMO both a front and rear swaybar are good bang-for-buck mods. But if you are only going to do one, do the rear first, as it makes a bigger difference and requires much less labour to fit.

Keep in mind while stiffer swaybars make for a nice bang-for-buck mod, they are far from an ideal solution. Getting the right amount of roll resistance from stiffer springs always gives a better result than using swaybars, which are inheriently compromised, due to the way they work by effectively lifting the inside wheels under cornering. Also swaybars do not help with controlling longtitudal movement (i.e they do not reduce squatting and diving likes stiffer springs do).

Having said that, swaybars are great for road cars, as they allow you add some roll resistance while making neglible difference to ride compliance, unlike running stiffer springs. Just be wary that while swaybars are a nice bang-for-buck mod, you will NEVER get a GREAT handling car from just adding stiffer swaybars.

Chisholm, no one is claiming to be turning the standard Magna into a track-ready car like yours, merely making a massive improvement to everyday spirited driving, which it does.

While i have to agree with everything you said CHISHOLM with my car (as with yours) sway bars were a little down the list of mods, and also went on the car with higher string rates, larger bore struts, adjustable camber arms, and a weight reduction of nearly 150kg. So large sway bars might have done to much for my car after all this, as my experience lead me to believe this was the case. Stock front sway bar was 20mm hollow , i went to 26mm hollow and rear i went from 16mm hollow to 20mm hollow. I later changed back to the 20mm front.

This was also in a car that had a weight distribution of 45/55 (after all the weight came out)

With a 2nd Gen, the first thing to do is to put a rear sway bar on.

Gerry

Let me know how you go as I have the variable rear sway bar, on my TH and the left side is interfering with the bottom shock mount, seems as if the bar as not made quite square, meant to get around to fixing it, but it only hits when the rear is jacked up.
Cheers,
HK


In answer to TWW (Hi!),

The vast majority of 3rd Gen Magna/Verada were not fitted with a factory rear sway bar. This means they do not have the fitting points built onto the car which a sway bar needs to attach to.

I have a TJ Sports which came with a factory rear sway bar (aka anti-sway bar, aka torsion bar etc). This vehicle has mounting points built onto the rear trailing arms, and has really nifty-looking little double-ball-joint (one at each end) linkages which join the rear suspension trailing arms to the sway bar.

My KJ Verada had no rear sway bar as standard. I needed to buy a Whiteline rear sway bar - BUT not ONLY the bar - I had to make sure I bought a kit with the FITTINGS to attach this bar to a car with no built-in fitting points. This means bolt a few brackets here and there, and the linkages which attach the sway bar to the rear suspension trailing arms look very ordinary compared to the factory version as fitted to my Sports.

Check out Wikipedia - search "sway bar / anti-sway bar /torsion bar" its quite a good article and explains how this item works on a vehicle.

If you find a wreck with a factory bar in good order, its unlikely to fit your car - or you will need to fabricate a way to make it fit. You MIGHT find a wreck with a bolt-on after-market rear sway bar - less common I'd bet......

Note also, that after-market suspension companies sell bars which are an alternative to existing factory bars (usually a thicker/stiffer bar than factory, and usually just the sway bar itself), as well as bars which are designed to be added to cars which originally had none (the bar itself, PLUS fittings to graft it onto car).

BTW, my Whiteline bar fitted to the KJ is hitting on the suspension, probably the cross-member..... I'm off to the local Pedders tomorrow morning, to see if they can check my install (I did it myself). Other members in here have had different fittings and alternative bars supplied by Whiteline to avoid the bar hitting other parts under the car..... hope they come to the party in my case as well. I rang Whiteline today, they do not check intalls etc themselves, and it was they who suggested that I take it to Pedders. Wish me luck!!