The more I read about sway bars the more I think they are unneccessary

[Sky Render]

There are several cars that are faster by removing one or both sway bars. It depends on chassis design, overall setup, and DRIVING STYLE. I like adjustable sway bars because it makes it stupid-easy to dial in understeer and oversteer, to a point.

I had this conversation with a friend about 10 years ago. He said sway bars are a bandaid for improper springrates. I countered that shocks are a bandaid for a flawed spring design.

He still pulled them. Everybody was faster than him.

This made me LOL.

 

[Norm Peterson]

Are swaybars on some cars unnecessary for controlling body roll? Maybe?....because the body roll could be controlled in other ways. It's all wheel rate

e.g., look at this Porsche 962...the little tube right in front of that heat exchanger. I suspect this may be present more for tuning out some sort of frequencies than actually controlling roll

Blade type sta-bars like that would be several times as rigid as a conventional 1-piece bar if it wasn't for the flexibility of the arms. Typically, the arms are flat blades, and adjusting stiffness is accomplished by rotating the arms about their long axes.

It looks like in that picture the motion ratio for the bar is somewhere around 0.5.


Does anybody have dimensions for the Whiteline bars? Not just the diameter (which is easy enough to find), I'd need at least enough information to be able to roughly plot it in plan view.


Norm

 

[Ike]

My sus. expertise:

You're sort of right in theory.

Higher CG=more swaybar involvement.
This is a correlation, not a causation.

Most people in this thread said something to the effect of "its one piece of a puzzle" and that is totally correct.

Don't forget anti-roll and dive geometry, roll center and axis geometry incl. dynamic roll couple, drive-line torques, aero affects, damper harmonics, and that any compensated rate increase will significantly affect braking performances (for better or worse).

Mclaren and Tesla (and certainly others, merc?) use electronically controlled hydraulics to mimic swaybar purpose. Tesla increases damper stiffness in roll, Mclaren's system is connected like sways, and has more functionality, but we will all end up in a conversation about the merits of hardware vs software tuning shortly.

On a related note, Tesla's suspension has short arms and ridiculous anti-roll geometry, which makes it awful on anything but a perfect road... and this fact goes totally unnoticed by even professional journalists and probably everyone but me test driving it on a bumpy mountain road. (my whiteline watts + LIVE AXLE handles bumpy roads better imho)

To address OP directly: You may see a benefit in theory, but that won't be on a mustang or any passenger car, of which all have a very high CG.
(okay on an NA miata (which is very theory-oriented with doublewish, low travel, thin bars) some people have reported gains by removing just the rear, and its controversial.)

F1 cars actually don't have as low of CG as you might assume, and the lat. G force makes them need swaybars despite the rate increase for downforce.

I am designing a kit car with a CG as low as an F1 car relative to it's track width, and this plus the fact that it will only pull 1g, meant I could design the suspension from the outset not to need sways, which is what you'd have to do to get rid of them on a Mustang I think.

EDIT: I am capable of redesigning the sus. on my mustang however I'd like from scratch, but I went with trusted names and a setup that has been tried and tested. Unless your business is aftermarket parts testing and tuning, I'd trust what Vorshlag and BMR say works. Please try ordering some really stiff springs, disconnecting the swaybars and go to a track with a camera!