I like a level car, but if you don't have one then that is what ramps and creepers are for. I don't think the Elephant ones are cockpit adjustable. If they are, then that is extra weight. ;)

Yes. Ramps, a creeper and a few minutes as opposed to just jacking up a corner.

Chuck's demo setup at the Monterey Historics may have been a prototype system, but unless I'm mistaken, it looked like a servo motor performed the necessary cable adjustment, thus remotely.

S

I've got a similar setup on my car. It can be a little difficult to dial in because the response is quite far from linear, but they are very simple to adjust. No need to jack up the car, the blades can be loosened, turned, and fastened while the car is on the ground.

/Peter

I'm late to this party.

Conventional adjustable bars meet the needs of many drivers, just as non-adjustables are fine for many. But they are not without their faults and limitations, mostly related to the changing angle of the drop link which can create poor transmission angles and binding.

Our objective with the bladed bars is to provide an option for those that want something better. Specifically - our bladed bars deliver perfect geometry in any adjustment position, ride in spherical bearings that never bind, are weathersealed, and have ease of adjustment unrivaled by conventional bars. They have proven to be popular.

I'll try to address a few of points made above:

- Linearity. To correct the record, conventional swaybar stiffness changes with the square of the lever arm length and is not linear at all. The relationship between length and stiffness is exponential!

Our bladed bars are more linear than conventional swaybars.

- Ease of adjustment. The bladed bars are much faster to adjust. While conventional bars might 'only' take 20 minutes or so to adjust, that is a big deal when you are trackside and your run session is coming up. It's hot and you're tired. Do you really want to jack up the car, take off the wheels, make your adjustments, put it back together - racing the clock to get out to grid. No.

The bladed bars take about 1 minute each to adjust. You don't even need to jack up the car.

- The attachment point of the drop link is the same that the Smart Racing bars used successfully for many years. Our experience too has proven this to be a robust and sturdy attachment.

- Remote adjustment is not in general availability. Yet.


You can say, "hey I don't need all that, and they are too expensive". Okay. But damn, get serious - It's a killer product. The best cars will have it :)

Not sure why everyone is saying you have to pull the wheels to adjust the rear bar. My racecar has been lowered significantly and I don't have to (using the ubiquitous Tarett 22mm bars). Front bar access might be a little tougher but should be reachable by turning the wheels.

I was hoping someone else would say that. I am sure I could do it with the car on the ground but I am young. ;)

By the way, how do you account for the sideways deflection of the blade? The blade wants to flex along the axis that has the least area moment. If the blade is flat then this is no problem because the deflection is in the right plane but when it is turned it is going to move at an angle if you look at it in front view. Even with the blade vertical there are going to be some side loads that will flex it laterally. With this only occurring on one side seems like there could be some odd behavior there- like changing behavior between left/right or changing diagonal corner weights.

The rear drop links are shorter, and despite the one hand job requirement ….. is doable.

I wish you guys could speak from experience about the front end.

BTW, unless your ride is set up with 0 caster, turning the front wheels away from straight ahead results in the caster angle effect which preloads the bar. Best wishes.

Sherwood

That is a good question. The resulting stiffness is a combination of the blade bending in both its stiff and weak planes.

Below is a graph that shows the response of a blade adjustable anti roll bar. The blue line shows the part of the stiffness that is contributed to the total stiffness by the weak plane of the blade as it is turned from a vertical position to a horizontal position. The black line shows the same contribution from the stiff plane of the blade. The red line shows the total stiffness of the anti roll bar as the blade is turned from a vertical position to a horizontal position.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1374651069.jpg

I have assumed that the blades does not turn sideways when either perfectly vertical or horizontal. It is not entirely correct, but for all practical purposes it is close enough to the truth.

The legends are in Swedish: the vertical axis shows the resulting spring rate of the anti roll bar as measured at the wheels, the horizontal axis shows how much the blade is turned. Zero degrees is vertical.

As for your concern for asymmetric loadings. Because the length of the blades does not change, the amount of force at the tip of one blade will be equal and in the opposite direction to the force at the tip of the other blade.

/Peter

Thanks for the graph (and thanks for making me realize the problem is simpler than I thought- just break up the force from the drop link into two components- one going into each axis), but I think I did not convey my point correctly. I realize that the force "in plane" for the bar must be the same on each side with equal lever arms, but if we are worrying about the change in drop link angles and preload with adjustable lever arms, then we should look at how the blade deflects outward or inwards in response to the in-plane force. This deflection changes the angle of the drop link such that if it started out perfectly in the plane of blade rotation then it will not be anymore. This means that the drop link force vector has an additional component pointing inward or outward. If the A-arm isn't horizontal then this force will cause additional moments on the A-arm. The additional degree of freedom provided by the blade flexing causes the motion ratio (degree rotation of the base of the blade per degree rotation of A-arm) to change. This wouldn't be as much of an issue if it was at least symmetric- meaning you need two blades adjusted to mirror each other. But with one blade you would have two different motion ratios, causing unequal displacements on inside and outside wheels in response to the change in normal force when cornering. Similar to having your roll center shifted laterally from the car centerline.

You are right about the blades bending sideways, but I don't think it will affect the roll stiffness of the car. At least not enough to make it behave in an asymmetrical way. Here's why I believe that.

Look at the forces at the suspension end of the drop links between the blades and the suspension. Choose a coordinate system with a vertical axis normal to the direction of the anti roll bar, and a horizontal axis parallel to the direction of the anti roll bar. The forces acting from the drop link onto the suspension can be split into one force component acting in the vertical direction and one acting in the horizontal direction. Even if you have one blade that can bend sideways and one that can't, the vertical force components in the suspension mount points on both sides still have to be equal and in the opposite direction. Therefore the roll limiting effect has to be symmetrical.

The blades are quite stiff so they won't bend much in either direction. Therefore the drop links won't move much sideways. Since there are ball joints in both ends of the drop links, the amount of force in the horizontal direction is governed by the sideways angle of the drop link. As long as that angle is limited, the amount of force in the sideways direction is limited. The horizontal component won't do much more than try to move the anti roll bar sideways in its mounts. Even as the suspension moves the horizontal force component should have very limited effect on the motion of the suspension.

That being said, I run my blades in a symmetrical setup. But that is mainly because the roll bar tube tends to move sideways if I don't.

/Peter

Agreed with Cory on the rear bar. I've had Weltmeister, Tarett (and TRG copy as well) and Smart bars on the cars we've run at the track. The rear is always adjusted on the ground (grass) lying on my back. The Smart bar is a piece of cake with a hex key and 10mm ratcheting box wrench. Tarett no more difficult with its singular bolt and slot-nut on the inboard side.

Front has been adjusted as described- jack up front (wheels on) and turn the wheel. The caster load is not so much that you can't move the drop link clamp & and slide it on the lever arm once loosened. Granted, you can't slide the clamp a huge amount. You have to incrementally slide the clamp each side at a time until you get to your desired setting, assuming you're making a big change. Small changes don't require a lot of back and forth to each side of the car- once or twice at most.

Also, I have a "quick-release" front bumper on my racecar held on with Terry body springs and latch style retainers. http://forums.pelicanparts.com/porsche-911-technical-forum/600829-quick-release-bumper-feedback.html So I can actually do the bar adjustment when jacked up w/out turning the wheels. I turn the wheels anyway just to make access easier.

As with many aftermarket performance products, the value... depends.

I always encourage that folks designing, producing, marketing and selling products know their customers as best they can. Including racing products. The good news is that in our case, there are ample opportunities for folks to learn about what us Porsche racers want and need. It is up to the businesses to take advantage of the access. Some do, some do not. And there is quite a bit of "in between."

I am not sure it makes a difference whether it takes 5-20 minutes to change the settings on a conventional aftermarket ARB set up versus 5 minutes for the blade style. The conventional style ARBs are vastly more popular than blade style in many Porsche applications likely because they offer a better performance versus cost.

I still have the Automotion catalogue where they introduced bladed set ups. I think they were made by E.R.P., and designed by a person with vast professional and amateur racing experience. And I am pretty sure that Dwight Mitchell did some testing. Automotion did not have prices listed for these kits. Since then, the Smart Racing Products and Tarett Products have become very popular. And by the way, just in case folks are not aware: the Smart Racing Products kits and spares are likely still available from Jerry Woods Enterprises. They were the last time I checked.

The folks at Automotion knew their market extremely well. The founders/owners helped support world championship winning Porsche-AG supported racing teams. There are lots of companies with similar ties and experiences in the Porsche aftermarket world.

Interestingly, I have not seen the Elephant set up on any of our PRC cars, including the high dollar builds. I suspect the value proposition isn't strong enough even for these cases. But time will tell.

And in my experience from the past couple of decades, most folks aren't making a lot of sway bar changes once the car is dialed in. The adjustment process is just fine undertaken between sessions. So differences of minutes in adjustment time just don't matter.

I run a Smart Racing front bar. No rear bar. It takes me less than 5 minutes to adjust my front bar.