I have a 67 vette that I drive on the street and drag race (8.7s) I want to mount some tow hooks and want to loose some weight, What effect would the removal of the bar have on handling on both street and strip
I wonder why they put those things on? I sure wouldn't remove it. Probably wouldn't notice it if you are going straight, but get it sideways and try to correct and you will certainly wish you hadn't removed it.
i know before i put one n the effie, i hit a bump n it would get squirlie just drivin on the road, mind you i had a really soft suspension the way i went about setting it up, either way, you would hate to find out the hard way i am sure, could always explore lighter weight options if you are getting into the shaving ounces, but i would recommend leaving it just from the added stability and mount a hook elsewhere, especially for the speeds she is made to go and handle.
I've heard of people using a set of quick disconnects to unhook the bar on the front for draggin. I wouldn't drive it on the street without one. In high school, a freind had a old cutl*** with no front swaybar (it was a beater). It was the craziest car i've ever been in, it would hop around like a rabbit, almost changing lanes in a curve. Imagine the frontend bouncing up and down in a circular motion...
Also, some circle track cars have lightweight hollow swaybar setups... it wouldn't be cheap, but you could have your cake and eat it too.
Some G.M. vehicles in the late '80s/'90s came with hollow sway bars--you may want to head to the junkyard with a tape measure.
It really depends on how street and how strip your car is. I have an OT street strip car that tends to get raced frequently mid-summer. So for 3 months it's got the endlinks removed and the bar wired up to the frame where it won't cause problems. End of the season, or if I decide to take a road trip during racing.....bout 30 minutes to remove the drag radials and reinstall the end links. The rockcrawler guys have developed quick release end links to gain wheel travel on street rigs, but they've all looked too clanky-bangy for my taste. Good luck
I guess I am missing something here. Not every p*** down a dragstrip will be straight. When you get crossways, you sure need a sway bar. Now, you can say you are never going to get crossed up, but I won't believe you.
A sway bar connects the right and left side of the suspension, applying force to one to offset the motions of the other thru a turn. When you make a right hand turn, the left front corner of the car's suspension will compress, while the right side suspension opens up. This makes for a soft, squishy turn, and because one tire is loaded with a whole lot of weight, and the other tire doesn't have any weight on it, it won't hold the turn as well. Plus, you're being slung around in the driver's seat. In the example above, a right-hand turn, the sway bar connects the right and left sides of the suspension. As the left side of the suspension compresses, the sway bar forces the right side of the suspension to compress too, which keeps the car flatter, and the tires planted. There is a certain amount of twist or torsional give built into sway bars, which will affect the amount of suspension planting and give. For example, imagine taking 5-foot long lengths of 1/2-inch rod and 1-inch rod. Weld a straight up-and-down "handle" at each end of the rods. Clamp one to your bench, grab onto the other one and twise. Both rods will twist slightly along their entire length, but the 1-inch rod will be much stiffer than the 1/2-inch rod. Sway bars are the same way, and that's why you will see them in different thicknesses. My '54 Buick came from the factory with a very thin front sway bar. The bushings were so worn out, it was like there was no bar at all, and it cornered like a pig. With new bushings, even the very thin front sway bar made the car corner much flatter. As stated earlier, there are hollow racing bars out there. Also, 4x4 truck guys use quick-disconnect ends on their sway bars, so that when the hit the trails, the front tires will act independantly of one another and they can crawl over rocks and through ditches, with each side of the suspension going through it's full range of motion. On a drag car, eliminating the sway bar takes weight off the nose of the car (always good), and lets the front suspension go through its full range of motion. With the sway bar hooked up, the front suspension is still tied, somewhat, the the frame rails where the sway bar brackets attach to the frame. This will limit the amount of travel your front suspension has--not ideal in drag racing (though I confess, I don't understand why--the point is to get as much weight on the rear tires as possible, by taking all the weight off the front tires--that's weight transfer. It would seem to me that if the front suspension is limited in it's travel, and you're making enough power, once the travel hits the limit, the front tires will come off the ground, and all your weight is on the rear tires. I suppose you're limited by the amount of power your engine makes though. If it doesn't make enough to pull the tires, it doesn't matter.) Hope this answered some of your questions. -Brad
If you're racing, front end rise takes priority over high speed stability. Weight transfer is king. My bar unhooked is worth a tenth in 60', but also makes the car 3x easier to launch (clutch) because I can get it just a little wrong, but still have enough transfer to recover. Bar hooked up in that cir***stance blows the tires off. The bar in question is also poly bushed 1 3/8" so it's an extreme example
sawy bar is definately needed if your going to drive on the street. it ties the lower control arms together without it they will want to drive apart from each other. When racing if you disconnect it it will help you get better weight transfer by letting the control arms roll backward(kinda causes the suspension to load). If you are looking to drop weight at the track just take it off when you get there, but you definately need one for the street.
To put it in technical terms, removing the front sway bar (or reducing its effectiveness ) will increase oversteer -ie: the car will steer more than you want it to ( in NASCAR terms the ****er'll be loose), making it prone to spinning out. Since Corvette's are a little that way to start, probably not a good thing !! In drag racing, as long as you are going straight you'd be OK, but would make it harder to control if you got in trouble. But the bar is part of the whole system ; spring rate, tires, etc., so really hard to say how bad it would be. Take it off, go into a BIG parking lot, and see how you like it !!!
take it off if your just going straight..you will miss it in the turns for sure..why do you want it off?
The older vettes held the road, to a certain point. The examples I was impressed by in the early 70's, were the ones that went into the woods, as the car lost it's grip going around a curve...too fast meant 'Good bye!" Far less forgiving than the standard rear wheel drive cars of that time. (Pushed harder? Less understeer?) You didn't mention, but if the car is a roadster, then the roll-center is lower than if it is a fastback. Either way, the lower the center of m***, the less it will sway, all other things being equal. Other posters mention the "systems" that affect behaviors. Shocks-stiff? Coils & leaves stiff? Suspension height? In racing, if you had to straighten it out, in-a-hurry, it seems that the sway bar would ***ist by tending to keep the ch***is flatter, as you can imagine it swaying side to side, as you cut the steering wheel back-and-forth.
I am ***uming that I'd rather keep the front end connected to the pavement. If the rear breaks loose, it simply asks for correction in order to straighten out. So I'd probably have a stiffer bar in front. Lets see what Mpls and Johnny say on this!
You might find this helpful... http://www.thirdgen.org/techboard/suspension-ch***is/431923-front-sway-bar-removal.html
The Jalopy Journal
