Sway bar missing?

[Mugen_Power]

Hey guys,

i just recently did my DC5-R brembo conversion, which i purchased from a local JDM shop. It included front/rear sway bar, axles, aluminum arms,etc

Everything is on perfectly including the Type-R Rear sway bar. The only prob right now is that the front sway didn't fit. I think the JDM shop didn't give the right front sway bar to me for the conversion.

now the question is, how will my car handle right now without the Type-R front sway bar? What will happen if i decided to track it? How will it handle as a DD?

For sure i will go back to the JDM shop to ask for the right front sway bar. I just want to know how the handling would be right now.

thanks guys.

[Drew1d]

I believe the lower control arms are a different size between the RSX and Si, so the mounting points are different.

I don't run a front sway, and my car handles fine. But take into account, I run stock springs, stock rear bar, and all season tires.

[27rocks]

I had taken my front sway off once to take the car to the shop and ease a few things for them. The drive there was fine without it but i would never go on a track without one. It felt really sloppy and less responsive with it off. I say your good for dd but make sure you throw it back on before track time.

[Zzyzx]

tune around it if you want. Every time I softened my front anti-roll bar my lap times decreased. Ended up settling on the civics 15.9mm bar, given my soft springs.

Be aware that to take advantage of the softer front anti-roll bar you are going to have to increase your static negative camber.


Other wise, enjoy your cars new found enthusiasm for turning... and when the ass end slides out, add in more throttle.

forgot to add: with out a front anti-roll bar you are going to experience a few new things. 1, the car is going to feel like it isn't responding to your steering inputs as quick as it did. If it bugs you that much you can add in the oem front bar, else I recommend learning to drive around it. Reason being, anti-roll bars decrease the maximum amount of grip the end of the car they are mounted to can generate. and given that the front end of a FWD car is ALWAYS the weakest link grip wise, its bets to try and maximize the amount of grip it can generate. Hence, softer if any front anti-roll bars.

The important part here is to realize that you cant just remove the front bar on a car and expect it to instantly handle better, you must retune the rest of the car as well.

Otherwies, be aware that you've greatly shifted the cars roll couple towards the rear. meaning the rear end will want to let go and slide a whole lot earlier in a turn. You can learn to drive it that way, as many of us have (a tail happy FWD car is a Fast FWD car). Else soften the rear ends anti-roll bar and/or add in more toe in at the rear end.


also: http://farnorthracing.com/autocross_secrets10.html the pertinent parts for us start where he talks about McStruts about half way through the page.

[27rocks]

Just curious... is this for the track or auto-x?? Cause both are completely different and need different set ups.

[Zzyzx]

The car was tuned pretty much the same for both really. I toed in the rear a bit for open track to settle the car down a bit more in long sweepers. Edit: the dampers were tuned completely different between open track and autocross; given their influence on transient handling the car was setup to be much more twitchy for autocross (stiff rear rebound valving) vs open track where the rears were run significantly softer. Yay Koni!

Otherwise I found that with a little practice I could make the car oversteer or understeer pretty much at will; Mid turn course corrections were performed with the throttle rather then the steering wheel.