How to tune overall ARB stiffness
 

Hi,

In adjusting sway bars, the idea is to stiffen the sway bar on the end of the car that you want to have less traction, or conversely, soften the sway bar on the end that you want to have more traction. So if you car had understeer, you might soften the front, or stiffen the rear bar.

Question: how do you decide which of these two seemingly equivilent options to use? Another way to ask this question is given adjustable sway bars on both front and rear, then how do you decide the overall stiffness to use?

The SRP catalog has a table that shows the following recommendations for this question:

> Car has push (front needs more grip):
> Turn-in: soften front ARB
> Turn-exit: stiffen rear ARB
>
> Car has oversteer (rear needs more grip)
> Turn-in: stiffen front ARB
> Turn-exit: soften rear ARB, or stiffen front

However, I don't really understand why SRP's recommendations would work. I have looked in Carrol Smith's and Fred Puhn's books, but haven't found a good explanation. Can anyone knowledgable explain how they tune their sway bars (for track applications) when they have both front and rear adjustables? Can you explain why the SRP method would work?

Thanks!
-Juan

I think the theory is you want to have the front as tight as possible and still get a solid bite on your turn in. So if you are understeering on turn in, soften the front to get a good turn in.

After that I know in practice at the track most people adjust just the rear to compensate to that days or that tracks characteristics.

So if you don't turn in well fix it in the front, after that focus on changing just the rear. This eliminates a lot of variables and means it becomes a one dimensional problem.

Jim