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Suspension / Sway Bars
- Thread starter camkelly
- Start date
Dolemite
is my name
I recently installed Eibach front & rears on my P3D-. Everything on the car is still stock, including the comical MXM4s.
I noticed the change as soon as the front wheels made it over the dip at the end of my driveway. The car feels much more "planted" now, and turn-in is super crisp. The other day I managed to do a 4-wheel "slide" in the rain w/o even upsetting the traction control (not that I noticed, at least). Everything just feels way more communicative & predictable. I'll be putting my MPP Sports on soon - should also make a big difference and resolve the annoying "floaty" feeling from the back-end during quick transitions... presumably a result of the car hitting the bump stops.
As far coilovers vs. sway bars go and how to tune them to "each other" - that might be more of an art than a science, maybe @MountainPass could chime in. I know that fat-ass sway bars reduce the independence between wheels, but at which point that becomes an "issue" & it needs to hand off responsibilities to the coilovers, I dunno. In my own *uneducated personal opinion,* in the interest of damper longevity, it may be good to have the sways handle a fair bit of the lateral transitions? Vs. dialing the coilovers up to 9,000. I actually prefer a harsher ride so having fat sways is fine for me.
FWIW here are the OEM specs. Fatter ones are probably P3D+:
Eibach:
Front: 32 mm
Rear: 22 mm
As far as sway bar "walk" goes - yes, I have noticed a bit of walk in my rear Eibach bar. But (and I've confirmed this w/ an extremely reputable source), I discussed this w/ Eibach & they said that as long as it's not hitting anything, it's a non-issue from a dynamics standpoint.
I noticed the change as soon as the front wheels made it over the dip at the end of my driveway. The car feels much more "planted" now, and turn-in is super crisp. The other day I managed to do a 4-wheel "slide" in the rain w/o even upsetting the traction control (not that I noticed, at least). Everything just feels way more communicative & predictable. I'll be putting my MPP Sports on soon - should also make a big difference and resolve the annoying "floaty" feeling from the back-end during quick transitions... presumably a result of the car hitting the bump stops.
As far coilovers vs. sway bars go and how to tune them to "each other" - that might be more of an art than a science, maybe @MountainPass could chime in. I know that fat-ass sway bars reduce the independence between wheels, but at which point that becomes an "issue" & it needs to hand off responsibilities to the coilovers, I dunno. In my own *uneducated personal opinion,* in the interest of damper longevity, it may be good to have the sways handle a fair bit of the lateral transitions? Vs. dialing the coilovers up to 9,000. I actually prefer a harsher ride so having fat sways is fine for me.
FWIW here are the OEM specs. Fatter ones are probably P3D+:
Eibach:
Front: 32 mm
Rear: 22 mm
As far as sway bar "walk" goes - yes, I have noticed a bit of walk in my rear Eibach bar. But (and I've confirmed this w/ an extremely reputable source), I discussed this w/ Eibach & they said that as long as it's not hitting anything, it's a non-issue from a dynamics standpoint.
that is the case but the car doesn't really understeer IMO if you drive it right but this is coming from racing a P85 for 7 years.
on a FWD car you'd put a thick front on, right?
& I've never messed with suspension stuff before, so just purely my feelings & basing on times & speeds vs others
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what I dont understand is if you look at Eibach swaybars on evtunings page:
Eibach Model 3 Swaybars
Click front and rear,then it seems it now has stop points for bushings?
Dolemite
is my name
RacerChris
Member
For FWD, you usually want to put the largest sway bar you can find on the back (and usually jack up tire pressures in the back as well) to get the car to rotate (over steer).
I have wondered about using a front bar (I also race SS) to help maintain the little negative camber we have but I don't know if that actually works in reality.
How would you describe the behavior of your car since you've gone with the front bar?
Also, what torque bias are you running the car at (Front to rear)?
I only ran in 50/50 this weekend, on Saturday I played with -2 &-3 stability but drove like crap + ran my S 1/2 the day. Sunday I left it in -1 stability and it felt great. Almost too responsive/ snappy at first and I really don’t get push, just stays flat. I’ll need to do some circles or a set slalom a bunch on soft and stiff and compare the data sometime.
Without the bar I might think45/55 and -2 or 3 stability is better. With it, 50/50
I don't think you will find aftermarket sway bars that are the same as stock. Not sure what the point would be. So in general they are all going to be stiffer.
I suggest looking at this differently: does the car feel too floaty to you? Does the body roll too much for your taste? Would you like to dial in more oversteer or understeer? If the answer to all these question is "no" then here's no reason for you to get aftermarket sway bars.
For my taste the M3P is way too floaty and rolls too much, especially in the rear. I'm running the hardest setting in the rear, middle setting on the front for daily street use. But this is the way I want the car to feel. I don't give a rip about lap times*. I want the car to feel fun to drive.
* Stiffer way bars reduce mechanical grip and can result in worse on-track performance.
Dolemite
is my name
At which point do phat sways begin to hamper performance? Obviously no sways isn’t good either so the answer must be somewhere in-between.
Either way this car is super floaty. No confidence in curves. As BigTuna00 mentioned...it’s all about feel and that’s always personal preference. I personally started soft bc I know I will get used to it and then will want to upgrade to the next setting.
Actually those are the original rates. They new rates with the redesign to prevent rubbing are ~2% stiffer according to UP. They stopped publishing the rates because of copycat designs according to one of the messages I saw on here from them...
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