Rear stabalizer/sway bar

[TheTanSedan]

Another reason (and the more likely one, I'll bet) is that a rear anti-roll bar limits axle and/or tire droop.

Kinda hard to get down that pasture row, or onto the jobsite with a wheel in the air. Somethings gonna break at some point.

For a street truck/tow vehicle, yeah, it's the way to go. A big measure of increased safety with premium shocks and steering stabilizer.

On front and rear bars I'd recommend greaseable polyurethane bushings. The bar and the bushings make a world of difference on every nose-heavy sedan, SUV, and truck we've owned.

It isn't really necessary, IMO, to upgrade the bar sizing from stock. Better, stiffer bushings will get rid of the slop. I'd say on up to 65-series tires at standard or levelled ride height (not necessarily one dropped F/R).

Set it up for the load you drive 90% of the time.

 

[Mattchou]

I would hightly recommend this modification to anyone not comfortable with the way their rear end follows them around through the turns.

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IYHO does this pertain to any medium size trucks as well that don't have a rear stabalizer?

 

[rusty 63 model]

I tried the Roadmaster active suspension years back on a 1997 GMC Sonoma, and I though it made a whale of a difference in how the little truck handled. Almost like a little sports car. Heres the link:

http://www.activesuspension.com

 

[Mattchou]

I tried the Roadmaster active suspension years back on a 1997 GMC Sonoma, and I though it made a whale of a difference in how the little truck handled. Almost like a little sports car.

Thanks for the reminder....forgot about that application.

 

[Mattchou]

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Originally posted by acewiza:
Did a custom job to put one from a 2000 2500 on my old '91 3/4 ton Dodge and made a world of improvement. These were solid axle with leafs all around and I believe never had any type sway bars front or back until they started offering them on the 350 1-ton's around '92 or '93.

Elfi FYI, the sway bar has nothing to do with weight transfer or traction. It is a device used to control body roll, i.e. the difference in suspension travel between the inboard and outboard sides of the vehicle as the suspension compresses/decompresses in a turn. This effect is more pronounced and dangerous with worn out shocks, poorly designed suspensions and top-heavy trucks (4wd, slide-in campers, etc.).

I would hightly recommend this modification to anyone not comfortable with the way their rear end follows them around through the turns. Fabbing up the axle brackets turned out to be a bit more work than I expected. This was mostly due to the radical design needed to avoid interfering with the brake lines on the driver's side. Nothing fancy really, just a bit odd. It works quite well, though. Truck feels much more stable in the turns now.

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Nice work!!

 

[Audity]

"FYI, the sway bar has nothing to do with weight transfer or traction."

Not true at all -

Changing or adding a sway bar will not change *total* weight transfer from the inside to outside tires (that is controlled by track and height of cg), but it will most definitely affect the amount that is transferred between the front tires as compared to the rear tires.

That's why the understeer/oversteer balance is so directly changed by the bar(s).

Adding a stiffer rear bar will increase weight transfer between the rear tires, while at the same time decrease it between the fronts. A stiffer rear bar will unload the inside rear tire, and load up the inside front (and affect the outside tires just the opposite).

And by the way, going to a stiffer bar at one end of the car will decrease total available traction at that end and increase it at the other end, all else being equal.

Increasing load transfer to the outside at one end will increase the traction of that one tire, and decrease the traction of the opposite tire.
But it's not a zero-sum game; the amount gained by the outside will not make up for the amount lost by the inside.

And, the total traction available at the other end of the car will increase, because load transfer at that end will decrease, the work will be shared more equally by the tires at that end.

A lot of this suspension stuff is counterintuitive.

 

[acewiza]

Rather than this counterintuitive stuff, why not think of it like this: Available traction determines when the tire or tires lose contact with the driving surface. The forces causing this to happen occur in at least one or a combination of two directions: Acceleration, deceleration, and laterally. With the exception of straight ahead acceleration in a one or two wheel drive scenario, the ideal situation for loss of traction to occur is when all four wheels lose traction at exactly the same moment, resulting in the most easily controlled or recoverable skid. This happens or is more closely approximated when weight transfer due to cornering forces is MINIMIZED due to good suspension design including among other things, SWAY BARS.

So yes, it does have something to do with minimnizing weight transfer in order to balance available tracion. The previous comments on this subject seemed to me to imply the sway bar would exacernate this problem in some way, which is of course, not true at all.

And yes, any sized vehicle can benefit from this device. Just become aware of when cornering forces come up against available traction and how they result in your subsequent direction of travel, if you tend to drive at the limit, which most people don't, but be warned.