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How Does A Sway Bar Control A Body Roll In Your Vehicle?

Home » Aftermarket Car Parts » How Do Sway Bars Work? » How Does A Sway Bar Control A Body Roll In Your Vehicle?

Increasing the thickness of a sway bar is a good way to control changes in tire camber caused by body roll, and allows for fine-tuning of a vehicle's suspension for precise, crisp and predictable handling. The stiffness of a sway bar must be properly transmitted into the chassis to do any good. The length of the arms that transfers loads into the chassis has a dramatic effect on how much roll stiffness a given bar can provide. The shorter the bar, the more stiffness it supplies. Roll resistance depends on the stiffness of the frame mounting, control arms, and drop links, and also where those links connect to the control arms. Simply bolting on a sway bar may not improve your handling if you don't consider all of the above factors.

Since a sway bar functions by twisting, the bushings used in the pivot points and mounting hardware are important to keep in mind. A stiffer sway bar won't do its job if its rubber bushings are too soft or worn out. Polyurethane bushings are practically impervious to oil and other road contaminants, and won't crush down or wear out like rubber bushings. They are also designed to be free-floating, rotating 360 degrees, so the sway bar and other suspension components that also are fitted with them can articulate fully without binding. In contrast, rubber bushings are often bonded to a metal shell and sleeve, and function with a twisting action that, when pushed to its limit, binds up instead of rotating freely.

Adding a bit more complexity to sway bar installation is the fact that varying the size and effectiveness of the front versus rear sway bars can change the understeer/oversteer characteristics of a vehicle. You can tune the suspension so that more of the cornering forces feed either the front- or rear-outside tire. The result is a vehicle with more balanced steering characteristics, along with less body roll.

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