Handling without front swaybar?

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Mopar87

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Have any of you managed to make a mopar handle without using a front sway bar?I do a fair bit of driving on rough roads and in most instances a front swaybar causes more harm than good because it restricts suspension travel and takes some independence out of the front suspension.On coil sprung vehicles you can swap in stiffer coil springs at are roughly 150-200 lbs heavier than stock and it will handle great.I don't know if I can get such an improvement with torsion bars.So how would you go about making a great handling car without using a front swaybar?In my experience rough roads tend to like a relatively stiff suspension with lots of travel to keep the tires planted.Obviously best handling and ride comfort arn't quite interchangeable in this instance.
 
On rough terrain you want more travel and softer suspension.
Tire choice plays a big part in this too. Taller sidewall and lower pressure smooth the ride but compromise handling at higher speeds.
The anti-sway bar transfers shock to the opposite side during a hard hit.
It controls body roll,needed on rough terrain.
Think ralley car suspension.
 
My experiences are that stiff shocks on rough roads try to send me into the cornfield all too often.
T-bars do just what coils do, except they cannot be progressive. So you have to put that into either the other suspension components or the shocks or the travel. On my car the sway bar is staying, because it is an active and dynamic member of control. Without it, I would have crashed my car many a time.
I run 28/29 in the 235/60-14 fronts and 24 in the 295/50-15 rears, cuz mostly I run on smooth roads. 50/60 series tires give me the feedback I need to stay out of trouble,with my sometimes exciting driving style.
 
Mopar87 said:
Have any of you managed to make a mopar handle without using a front sway bar?I do a fair bit of driving on rough roads and in most instances a front swaybar causes more harm than good because it restricts suspension travel and takes some independence out of the front suspension.On coil sprung vehicles you can swap in stiffer coil springs at are roughly 150-200 lbs heavier than stock and it will handle great.I don't know if I can get such an improvement with torsion bars.So how would you go about making a great handling car without using a front swaybar?In my experience rough roads tend to like a relatively stiff suspension with lots of travel to keep the tires planted.Obviously best handling and ride comfort arn't quite interchangeable in this instance.
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1.03 torsion bars and single tube shocks made a big difference for me, and we have **** roads.
 
I wouldn't drive an A-body without the sway bar, but as stated you can go bigger on the torsion bars and compensate some. We have garbage roads here in California and the stiffest sprung car I own in a 2004 BMW 330Ci convertible with sport suspension which includes low profile tires on 18" rims. The handling is outstanding, but I feel every poor patch of road. This is the way I prefer a car to behave, but it does come at a cost...pothole damage...
DW139617.JPG
 
When I said stiff suspension I didn't mean a rock hard setup.Think more of the stock spring rate on a sportscar vs a caddy. It has to be stiff enough to keep the car from floating but still keep the tires planted.The big kicker is you need alot more rebound than compression to plant and control the tires,but you need enough compression so you dont bottom out.
 
Jim Lusk said:
I wouldn't drive an A-body without the sway bar, but as stated you can go bigger on the torsion bars and compensate some. We have garbage roads here in California and the stiffest sprung car I own in a 2004 BMW 330Ci convertible with sport suspension which includes low profile tires on 18" rims. The handling is outstanding, but I feel every poor patch of road. This is the way I prefer a car to behave, but it does come at a cost...pothole damage...View attachment 1715268583
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Have you ever bottomed out or destroyed an oil pan on the smooth roads of california with a stock height car?I smashed an oil pan on a stock vw jetta just pulling into a parking lot.
 
I’m not sure what car you have and how rough the roads are. But my ‘66 Valiant wasn’t too bad with stock “sport” suspension with 14” tires on Michigan streets which are like 3rd world roads.
All these old cars have very soft springs, pretty poor shock dampers & small tires.
Like coil springs there are stiffer torsion available. The progressive rate of the torsion bars should work in your favor too. Larger wheels, 14” replacing 13” of most A-bodies, and taller tires can help too.
I think there are some guys Rallying their cars and they might be able to help.
 
My convertible has the soft slant six springs all around, KYB shocks and a nice Hellwig hollow sway bar. I find it handles rough roads very well, because the soft springs provide great compliance. I don't have any problems with bottoming out, running 205/70-14s on 14 x 5.5 steelies at slightly below stock ride height ( I lowered the front a bit to level it out because the rear springs are getting tired). I am not talking about 4WD rockpiles, but I ride unmaintained back roads all over the state, with huge potholes, stream crossings and washboard dirt. For contrast, my fastback with HD springs, uprated t-bars and front and rear sway bars is a much, much rougher ride on the same kind of roads (it is lowered an inch and runs 215/70-14 on 14 x 6 rallies). And it doesn't handle hazards like potholes on the apex of corners as well, either -- it bounces and skids instead of just soaking it up. Seriously, soft springs are the way to go, if you have adequate ground clearance to start with. But you can't have both good compliance and a lowered stance.
 
I think the shocks and tires will make more of a difference driving on rough unpaved roads. I take my 1993 Jeep Cherokee off-roading every now and then and before heading to the trails I remove the front sway bar so the front axle can fully articulate when going over rocks and such. However what really smooths out the ride is airing down my tires; typically I drive around with 44/40 psi front/rear but off-road I go down to 25 or less. I have gone off-roading with the front sway bar still hooked up and while the ride wasn't much different it had much less flex in the front.

Overall if you leave the rest of your suspension the same and just add a front sway bar I think you will barely notice any difference in ride quality on unpaved roads. Changing to lower-profile tires will make the biggest difference in ride feel followed by shocks then springs (torsion bars). FWIW I went to 1" t-bars on my '70 Duster and noticed almost no difference in ride quality compared to stock springs and I'm still running no sway bars. It handles OK but the body lean is too much when you really push it in a hard corner and the fat 60-series tires on 15" wheels doesn't help.

I would be more careful about selecting the shocks, wheels and tires than whether or not to get a front sway bar. You need it in a car, in fact you need it on BOTH ends if you're running modern tires that grip worth a darn.
 
I got into road handling A-bodies in the mid-70s and had some interesting references not available to most folks as I happened on a 65 Cuda that was built into an A-Sedan SCCA race car, run competitively for a number of seasons (including the first year of Trans Am in 66) and popped up for me as a has-been race care in 1975. The legitimate race engineering specs of T-bar, sway bar and shock are good to this day but you don't want to drive that combo on the street. I converted the Cuda to a street driver in 76 and found out about overkill. I have built a number of street handlers since and believe going light on spring rate while using available anti-sway bars yields a pleasant A-body sports car. It's the Herb Adams philosophy... (Pontiac Trans Am chassis engineer).
 
A friend suggested I should expand on the last. Maybe noting the friendly argument at the time as Dick Guldstrand. Corvette chassis engineer was about stiff springs and light anti-sway bars as Herb Adams was into lighter spring rates and bigger sway bars (Pontiac Trans Am). I have built a number of early Valiants using standard V8 T-bars, lightweight drivetrains, Addco anti-sway bars and Koni shocks (others work it now, KYB, Bilstein), and found great road performance. I guess my recommendation is to not get sucked into overly stiff spring rates...
 
MOPEkidD-3 said:
I think the shocks and tires will make more of a difference driving on rough unpaved roads. I take my 1993 Jeep Cherokee off-roading every now and then and before heading to the trails I remove the front sway bar so the front axle can fully articulate when going over rocks and such. However what really smooths out the ride is airing down my tires; typically I drive around with 44/40 psi front/rear but off-road I go down to 25 or less. I have gone off-roading with the front sway bar still hooked up and while the ride wasn't much different it had much less flex in the front.

Overall if you leave the rest of your suspension the same and just add a front sway bar I think you will barely notice any difference in ride quality on unpaved roads. Changing to lower-profile tires will make the biggest difference in ride feel followed by shocks then springs (torsion bars). FWIW I went to 1" t-bars on my '70 Duster and noticed almost no difference in ride quality compared to stock springs and I'm still running no sway bars. It handles OK but the body lean is too much when you really push it in a hard corner and the fat 60-series tires on 15" wheels doesn't help.

I would be more careful about selecting the shocks, wheels and tires than whether or not to get a front sway bar. You need it in a car, in fact you need it on BOTH ends if you're running modern tires that grip worth a darn.
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Take about 10 psi out of your tires on your cherokee at all times,they arn't that heavy.I run 45 psi in the front tires of my 94 dodge ram diesel.The front end of it weighs as much as the entire cherokee.With less psi in the tires you wont wear just the centers.The ideal psi is where the tread contact is flat on the ground for the street.25 psi offroad you arn't even aired down.I went snow wheeling yesterday with my stock 93 dakota and I aired down to 15/13 psi in the deep snow.Granted the 235/75/15 tires where too small to float on the snow anyway.The bigger the tires the less PSI you need anyway because of the volume of air in the tires.If your vehicle is really light with big tires it hardly even needs air to keep the tread flat.I had an 81 subaru hatchback on 31 x10.5x15 tires and it ran 15/12 psi on the highway.Offroad the tires were more or less flat.

The swaybar on something with IFS has a big difference on ride quality.The swaybar essentially adds roughly 200 lbs of spring rate to each side because it is very rare that both tires will move straight up and down.Usually only one tire encounters a pothole or a bump..So the suspension has to twist the sway bar to move one side or the other.

My car is a 73 Plymouth Scamp with a 318 and sadly, an autotragic.
 
Mopar87 said:
Take about 10 psi out of your tires on your cherokee at all times,they arn't that heavy.I run 45 psi in the front tires of my 94 dodge ram diesel.The front end of it weighs as much as the entire cherokee.With less psi in the tires you wont wear just the centers.The ideal psi is where the tread contact is flat on the ground for the street.25 psi offroad you arn't even aired down.I went snow wheeling yesterday with my stock 93 dakota and I aired down to 15/13 psi in the deep snow.Granted the 235/75/15 tires where too small to float on the snow anyway.The bigger the tires the less PSI you need anyway because of the volume of air in the tires.If your vehicle is really light with big tires it hardly even needs air to keep the tread flat.I had an 81 subaru hatchback on 31 x10.5x15 tires and it ran 15/12 psi on the highway.Offroad the tires were more or less flat.

The swaybar on something with IFS has a big difference on ride quality.The swaybar essentially adds roughly 200 lbs of spring rate to each side because it is very rare that both tires will move straight up and down.Usually only one tire encounters a pothole or a bump..So the suspension has to twist the sway bar to move one side or the other.

My car is a 73 Plymouth Scamp with a 318 and sadly, an autotragic.
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I run the higher pressures in my Jeep for better on-road manners, I have at least 20k miles on this set of Firestone Destination A/Ts in 235/75-15 (not that big, just about 29") running that high PSI and have had no center wearing issues at all, and I check my tires often and rotate them every 8-10k miles. I definitely notice a difference when the seasons change and the tires lose pressure, going from 30-ish psi back up to 40+ makes a huge difference in on-road handling and rolling resistance (gas mileage). Same goes for my Duster, with the fat tires on it now I keep the fronts at max pressure (40 psi) and the rears a tad lower like ~36; never had an uneven tire wear issue on that car either.

I tried running down at 15 psi off-road in my Jeep once but the tires flattened out so much I lost some ground clearance which is kind of a big deal when you don't have a lifted suspension and big tires. All my friends with their similar-weight XJ Cherokees ran much lower tire pressures in the 10-15 psi range but they also had much bigger tires (33" plus).

Also I remember talking to some local tire shops, car and truck tires tend to work better at our higher altitude (5000' ASL) when filled to higher pressures, for some reason. I don't really understand why but I've proven it to be true with my own vehicles.
 
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Actually I think I just figured it out lol... when you stick a pressure gauge on your tire valve, it measures GAUGE pressure, as in the difference in pressure between the inside of the tire and the outside air. If the outside air is at a lower pressure, then the same reading on the gauge at higher ambient pressure actually means there is less absolute pressure inside the tire. I think? lol...

Sorry didn't mean to get off topic there
 
If anything tire pressure would go up at higher elevations not down.The difference between sea level and colorado is about 2 psi.That 2 psi less ambience air pressure yields a massive 18% loss in engine power.

Back to my original question it looks like a 1.06 torsion bar and and HD or XHD springs would be in order.
 
Mopar87 said:
Have you ever bottomed out or destroyed an oil pan on the smooth roads of california with a stock height car?I smashed an oil pan on a stock vw jetta just pulling into a parking lot.
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I haven't bottomed out an oil pan enough to put a hole in it, but I have probably scraped a few. That's one of the arguments for stiffer springs and lighter sway bars for a street car. I can tell you that my son's '67 Barracuda with all iron 383 (except intake) had 1.14" torsion bars and KYB shocks. I did not find that ride objectionable and it was very hard to bottom the car out, even on rough back roads. Some day that car may hit the roads again with a lighter, stroked 400...
 
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