Gen III stabilizer bar upgrade......

[Allan]

Has anybody that tracks a gen III upgraded their stabilizer bars to reduce body roll and improve handling?
If so, what has been your experience, pros and cons.
Have heard of installing gen IV ACR bars, and I see now that Snakeoyl has an upgrade kit, but there are no specifics, like how much stiffer than OEM. And if they are adjustable or not.

 

[Bobpantax]

Hi Allan. One of the upgrades I did to my former supercharged Gen III was the installation of a Gen IV ACR front antisway bar. The rear one was the same as stock. The difference was immediately noticeable. It was an inexpensive and worthwhile mod.

 

[Allan]

Hi Allan. One of the upgrades I did to my former supercharged Gen III was the installation of a Gen IV ACR front antisway bar. The rear one was the same as stock. The difference was immediately noticeable. It was an inexpensive and worthwhile mod.

Thanks Bob!
One concern I have is to maintain the car's current understeer/oversteer handling characteristic, with a tendency towards neutral if anything. With Hoosiers and track alignment, the car will slightly understeer in a high speed corner with maintenance throttle on. I'm OK with this, I'd just like to carry more mid corner speed and it seems that reducing the amount of body roll would help. -Not going to resort to adding aero bits to the car, I'd buy an ACR before I try to convert my gen III into a poser version of one.

From my understanding of research I've done, the rear bar being stiffer will help reduce understeer. Stiffening the front bar only will make the car oversteer. I'm wondering if the Snakeoyl setup is a balanced improvement front/rear or is biased one way or the other or adjustable.

The ACR bars should both be stiffer than the gen III OEM, unless they engineered them to work with the aero stuff, hence the same bar in the rear. The wing on the back keeps the car planted.

How did changing the front bar only affect the car's handling at the limit? Did the car become tail happy?

 

[Allan]

I know I can contact the Snakeoyl dudes and ask them what's up with it.
I'd just like to get some real world experiences from guys that have messed with this first, as I think the info will be more straight up.

Probably should talk to Jon B. to get his insight on the subject. -I've not seen him to offer any upgrades for this, otherwise I'd probably just bought the stuff from him already.

 

[Bobpantax]

The rear ACR bar was the same. I had the parts code checked. I did not notice any negative effect but keep in mind that I also had Eibachs and Motons with the car lowered a bit and corner balanced. I only tracked it twice after the sway bar change and I liked the improvement. I did not notice any tail issues. The ACR sway bar does weigh quite a bit more but not enough to make a noticeable difference in handling so I assume that it did not materially effect the corner balance.

As an aside, one of the most important things I learned tracking my car was removing some of the fluid from the overflow reservoir before tracking the car. The pressure release valve and drain dump out excess fluid behind the right front tire right in the path of the right rear tire. It was fun going backward at 110 MPH driving through the rear view mirror but I would not want to do it again.