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Old 10-08-2015, 02:26 PM   #1 (permalink)
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Maintaining Momentum: Insight Sway Bar Fab and Mod.

I have been reading too much Autospeed lately and decided to upgrade my anti sway bar / stabilizer bar / anti roll bar situation. The Nugget handles fairly well the way it is but it bottoms out easily around corners and seems to lose a lot of momentum through wheel scrub from understeer. These mods should make it even more fun to drive and may save a little gas too.

My goals:
1) Mod the front bar to be stiffer and adjustable as there does not seem to be an aftermarket front bar.
2) Make an adjustable rear bar. There are some aftermarket choices out there but I want this to be really easy to adjust.
3) Stiffen up the rear springs.

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Last edited by orange4boy; 10-08-2015 at 02:37 PM..
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Old 10-08-2015, 08:46 PM   #2 (permalink)
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Good thoughts! I used to have an older 4 cyl 5 spd cavalier. It had a rear sway bar, stiffer springs, strut brace, etc. That car handled GOOD! It wasn't the fastest, but it could out handle most vehicles. In the powered and fuel miserly, it is all about the baby!
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Old 10-09-2015, 02:03 AM   #3 (permalink)
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So far all is going well but there are a few snags that will need unsnagging.

First, the rear. My design deviates from the typical bar with bushings and linkages because with a torsion bar suspension, they are redundant. The existing torsion bar suspension already has arms built in so all we need to do is stiffen it. I have decided to do a bottom mount for ease of access and installation. I'm trying to come up with a design that can be removed and adjusted without jacking up the car.

I have a couple of ideas for making it adjustable. My first one was having nesting tubes that can rotate freely or be fixed together to increase or decrease resistance. They would have tabs that can be locked or bolted together somehow. This has some disadvantages. Moving parts are always less desirable as there is always the possibility of malfunction. I'm now thinking of moving the bar instead.

My prototype rear bar is a 19mm hollow bar with a .113 in. wall. The installation requires only two holes drilled in the bottom leaf of the torsion bar. I have placed it at roughly the same distance from the pivot as an inside bar would be to keep bending to a minimum. I like the simplicity of this because it has no moving parts and it is readily accessible for adjustment and inspection. I will increase the bolt size later once the position is finalized. That way I won't weaken the bar unnecessarily. It has reduced roll and understeer nicely and reduced bottoming on bumpy corners. Once I stiffen the front a bit I might want to increase the resistance of the rear bar even more to keep it that way.

Here's the prototype:


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