sportster with or without front antirollbar?

[Sportster-Green]

is there any noticeable effect between ARB fitted or removed considering the car is driven mostly on normal (bumpy) roads?

[RobA]

Re: sportster with or without front antirollbar?

HI - I have never fitted one on mine and have never experienced rolling problems at all.

Regards.

Rob

[andyf]

Re: sportster with or without front antirollbar?

The anti-roll bar enable you to reduce the body roll while cornering without having to increase the spring rates, it will also effects the front to rear weight distribution so if your car is normally tail happy fitting a front anti roll bar will calm it down and make it tend to understeer more. I wouldn't bother fitting one unless you have some handling issues that you're trying to fix and even then you need to experiment with it in order to get it set up properly. I helped my cousin set up his superstox car and we spent half a day at Matchems circuit trying different settings until we got it right.

[Mike]

Re: sportster with or without front antirollbar?

The anti-roll bar enable you to reduce the body roll while cornering without having to increase the spring rates, it will also effects the front to rear weight distribution so if your car is normally tail happy fitting a front anti roll bar will calm it down and make it tend to understeer more. ......... I helped my cousin set up his superstox car and we spent half a day at Matchems circuit trying different settings until we got it right.

What settings were you able to adjust, and what changes were you able to detect?

[copperleaves11]

Re: sportster with or without front antirollbar?

I had a roll-bar fitted when I had the Rover V8 engine, but when I changed to the BMW M20 unit, the sump interfered with it. I left the bar off, thinking of sourcing an alternative if I found the handling affected. However , like Rob, for road use I can't tell the difference. David

[andyf]

Re: sportster with or without front antirollbar?

What settings were you able to adjust, and what changes were you able to detect?

We had fully adjustable camber and caster as well as being able to move the inboard mounts up and down. The first thing was to get the roll centres aligned, when we started without the anti-rollbar it was picking the front inside wheel about 6-8" off the ground as it went round a corner so we moved the pick-up points on the chassis up about 2" which made it roll much more evenly in the corners. Once we had that sorted we experimented with the spring rates to get good balance and traction and finally added the anti-roll bar to fine tune it. On the competition roll bars you can slide the drop link along the arm to adjust the effective rate of the anti-roll bar which enable you to add or remove more understeer. If you're happy with the handling on the road and you don't intend racing on a circuit its probably not worth the effort. I know my roadster would benefit from a panhard rod on the back axle but I haven't bothered because it handles well enough for road use.

PS I added an anti-roll bar to the sunbeam, in that case I was trying to dial out some of the oversteer.