Handling without front swaybar?

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.

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.