Front Sway bar

[Rexracer]

I forget which thread we were talking about this, but I have wanted to test out a front sway bar. I got the Eibach one installed before last weekends Packwood event. Having ran there a couple weeks ago for the National Tour, I figured it was as close to back/back as I could get.

Day 1 was ROUGH, car felt so different, VERY flat when cornering, but it felt like I couldn't put power down. It also felt like it was having snap over-steer (opposite of what you would expect with a FSB), and the thing you would expect, pushing when going into a tight off throttle corner. Being behind the leader, and trying to catch up, I was pushing really hard, and it didn't work, I finished 2nd of 9 in class and 16th of 97 pax. So not terrible, but still frustrated, regretting my change and un-able to change back for day 2.

After the event we had a test n tune, and I had my buddy drive. He confirmed parts of what I was feeling, but wasn't getting the snap over-steer that I was, we agreed I was just pushing to hard, and needed to drive the car as it was. Meaning I needed to slow earlier, and roll into the power. After 4 test runs i was able to shave a full second off my time, feeling much better about the setup.

Day 2, I was less aggressive, braking early, rolling into the power, and really taking advantage of the much faster transitions that the FSB allowed. This course had 3 slaloms, one of which that was 8? cones long? Crazy long. All in all it worked out great, I won my class, and finished 1st pax in heat 1, for the day I was 11/89 in PAX .

I am not 100% sold on this setup yet, still more testing to do. A side thought though, I don't believe I ever was on 3 wheels with this setup, which could help with the roll-over risk that these cars have. I would need to get a couple cameras instealled to confirm this, but the tail definitely wasn't hiking up like it normally does.

 

[e1_griego]

Yes, it looked flatter for sure. I was working course for your heats this weekend, and watched your runs at tour.

If you don't like that bar let me know and I'll probably snag it haha.

 

[SteveS]

You may have been experiencing what NASCAR drivers used to call pushy loose. They would go into a corner and the car would understeer (push) and then when they reacted by lifting, when the front wheels regained traction, they had too much steering angle from trying to steer harder into the push and it then rotated the car and caused oversteer.

 

[Rexracer]

You may have been experiencing what NASCAR drivers used to call pushy loose. They would go into a corner and the car would understeer (push) and then when they reacted by lifting, when the front wheels regained traction, they had too much steering angle from trying to steer harder into the push and it then rotated the car and caused oversteer.

Yeah that sounds about exactly what was happening. Pushing to hard, start PUSHING, crap its PUSHING, now over steer SNAP.
After I adjusted, braked earlier, it was great, no snap.

 

[Rexracer]

Yes, it looked flatter for sure. I was working course for your heats this weekend, and watched your runs at tour.

If you don't like that bar let me know and I'll probably snag it haha.

Was great to put a face to the name!

I think I am 80% for the bar right now, my concern is the fear that there will be situations where it does more harm then good. We will see next month at PIR.

 

[m3kerry]

I’m running that same bar on the front with a little toe out and the car neutral


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

[Rexracer]

How you like it so far?

 

[m3kerry]

How you like it so far?

In Texas on a national style course I did well. I’m n the local wide open cam car course I did not pax well but let the turn in and I’m able to get power down. I’m running some toe out.

 

[Rexracer]

In Texas on a national style course I did well. I’m n the local wide open cam car course I did not pax well but let the turn in and I’m able to get power down. I’m running some toe out.

I didnt get the car re-aligned after doing the bar, I should get that done, and ask for a little toe out...
Thanks!

 

[m3kerry]

It’s astonishing how fast you can drive into a slalom iand the car still turn

 

[Rexracer]

It’s astonishing how fast you can drive into a slalom iand the car still turn

Did a practice day with another club last weekend. They had a fast entry to a 3 cone slalom. I was able to go into it full speed and not lift. I had to be careful as there was a tight turn around at the end that I would blow if I didn't get on the brakes early enough.

 

[foodtruck]

Sorry to revive the old thread, do you still feel like adding the Eibach front bar is an improvement? I'm looking to keep the front a bit flatter in turns. It seems there's a split between folks who like front bar for less body roll and folks who like the rear bar for more rotation. I always felt I could have more rotation by bumping the rear pressures so I'm leaning towards trying the front bar.

 

[Rexracer]

Sorry to revive the old thread, do you still feel like adding the Eibach front bar is an improvement? I'm looking to keep the front a bit flatter in turns. It seems there's a split between folks who like front bar for less body roll and folks who like the rear bar for more rotation. I always felt I could have more rotation by bumping the rear pressures so I'm leaning towards trying the front bar.

Yes/No. In quick transition situations the front bar was amazing. It also made the car a lot more enjoyable to drive, not only on the road, but on AX courses. But after going to nationals, and not doing great, I looked through the photos from the event, and found one that showed I was lifting my inside front tire 2" off the ground. Lincoln has so much grip, and with such fast sweepers, there was enough forces to lift that inside tire, and let it spin, loosing forward drive.

So if your home course is extra grippy with high speed sweepers, maybe want to avoid it, if its smaller lots with lots of tight slaloms I would try it. After I got back from Nationals, I went back to stock, there are courses it worked better, and others it was worse. Overall how I stacked up against my fellow competitors averaged out about the same, but I hated driving the car with the stock bar, and ultimately sold it.

Last year Rob Krider won Vegas Tour (medium grip, very slalom intensive) and Packwood Tour (lower grip) with the bar in and said he loved it. He didnt have high level competition but did well in overall pax.

 

[Dialcaliper]

Just to chime in, I think the Eibach bar is really too stiff for anything but a track car running a front aero splitter. At least by the math it introduces too much understeer to be balanced out by almost any sort of rear bar available - until the point the rear tires roll over and start to lose traction)

I can't say I've been in any sort of competitive situation with the FiST, but if you want a slightly stiffer bar option than even the 2017+ ST 21mm bar, Ultra Racing makes a 22mm bar (7/8" actual measured diameter) that was originally made for the Mk6 Fiesta ST in Europe (Mk6-Mk8 Fiesta have very similar suspension). It's nominally about 25% stiffer. I have it installed on my car and I'm very happy with the results (balanced with a 22mm Hotchkiss rear bar). Behavior when driven hard is mild but predictable oversteer similar to stock but with significantly less roll.

 

[Rexracer]

Just to chime in, I think the Eibach bar is really too stiff for anything but a track car running a front aero splitter. At least by the math it introduces too much understeer to be balanced out by almost any sort of rear bar available - until the point the rear tires roll over and start to lose traction)

I can't say I've been in any sort of competitive situation with the FiST, but if you want a slightly stiffer bar option than even the 2017+ ST 21mm bar, Ultra Racing makes a 22mm bar (7/8" actual measured diameter) that was originally made for the Mk6 Fiesta ST in Europe (Mk6-Mk8 Fiesta have very similar suspension). It's nominally about 25% stiffer. I have it installed on my car and I'm very happy with the results (balanced with a 22mm Hotchkiss rear bar). Behavior when driven hard is mild but predictable oversteer similar to stock but with significantly less roll.

While I never had an understeer issue with the Eibach bar in autocross, I definitely would have tried the in-between (stock/Eibach) bar if I had known about it. At the time, the Eibach was the smallest increase I could find, so a 25% stiffer setup could be the happy middle ground. I did consider modifying the Eibach with an extra set of holes, so I could have a stiff setting and a soft setting (close to stock), but worried about end link angles so never did it.

It sounds like you're doing track day type of stuff, all of my comments are exclusively about autocross, where speeds are slower, but inputs are larger, so getting rotation isn't an issue.

 

[foodtruck]

After I got back from Nationals, I went back to stock, there are courses it worked better, and others it was worse. Overall how I stacked up against my fellow competitors averaged out about the same, but I hated driving the car with the stock bar, and ultimately sold it.

Thanks for the feedback! The reason for me wondering about the front bar is the new set of RE71RS is currently completely overpowering the frontend. I'm pretty sure most of that can be attributed to old suspension, however I'm planning out what to do if new suspension doesn't fix the problem (aside from selling the car, haha). Many many options and almost certainly no matter what I pick will be somehow worse than what however many collective decades of experience Ford has put into designing the OEM suspension/tire combo resulted in!

but if you want a slightly stiffer bar option than even the 2017+ ST 21mm bar,

Yes, I think I saw you post about this bar on another thread. Seems like like a very approachable increment in stiffness. This is my current tentative plan so far depending on now the suspension fix will go