Is it worth $70 for a 1 1/4" front sway? Is bigger really thta much better i.e. are those 1 3/8" bars worth $400? Am I correct in saying their is so much more is shocks springs and tires than sway bars? What does everyone think the optimal size sway bars are for a full body 71 with a big block big driver and big trans

IMHO and from my experience. I have a 70 that is a th350 sbc car. It just had the factory 7/8 bar up front. I put a 7/8 rear bar on it and that made a bit of a difference, but then i picked up the 1 1/8 front bar from a fellow TC member, installed it and was surprised at the difference it made. It made a big difference in body roll and the overall handling of the car. I felt much more comfortable actually trying to go around a few turns. I have a friend that lives 22 miles up this canyon, lets just say it is a lot more fun to drive that canyon now.

Daniel

There's always alot of debate about this, but from my research when I was building my suspension, the 'experts' generally agree that big swaybars are kind of a 'bandaid' type suspension mod and they have negative aspects. It is better to have a proper working suspension with the right geometry, and the big swaybar isn't needed.
with my truckarm kit, I use the stock front swaybar, and no rear swaybar.

While its kind of hard to isolate, since I rebuilt the front end, springs shocks bushings and all.
I added a 1-1/4” bar, that I spent 70 bucks on.

I’d do it again,
But there is No Way I’d pay 400 dollars for a 1-3/8” (or any other) sway bar.

That’s on a 68 SS-396 with a 245lb driver.

I'd bet it makes a big difference over the stocker, but so do new bushings.

From what I have read it is something (but not entirely) of a band-aid, and at some point, bigger is not better, even for all out corner applications. I have a big 1 1/4 up front, and 7/8 (I think anyway) out back. I don't think going bigger than this would help.
I can say that when I did all new bushings on the rear of the car (the front was all new stuff from the start of the resto) the car just felt alot better.
I think a system with new, tight, rubber bushings, well maintained and greased, with 1 1/4 and 7/8 out back will make the cars ride and handling alot more fun and enjoyable.
But there is only so far you can go with 30 year old technology.. when I went to the coil overs, it felt like a different car, when I noticed really very little seat of the pants difference when I switched to just the global west upper arms first (mainly for wheel clearance issues, but they just happened to be a match made in heaven for the coil overs..).
For around town performance enthusiast driving, I'd think 1 1/4 is perfect and no more is needed or warranted, you could probably get by fine on less. A well built stock setup with a 1 1/4 is fine. I'd think a total bushing refresh and 1 1/4 would be worlds better than a 1 3/8 unless you had some specific need for it.

hth-- but just my opinion
matt

I paid $30 for the used Trans-Am 1&1/4" bar on my Chevelle. Use 1" longer end links to keep the bar off the tie rods, good to go. Made a different car out of my Chevelle. see the other thread about this. I also think the 1&1/8" bar is a lot easier to find and probably work about as well. 70-81 Camaro parts I'm talking about here. I ran across a wrecked WS-6 T/A and snagged the bar and the steering box off it.

Tom

Every 1/8" increase in thickness results in an increase of roughly 50% in the stiffness of the sway bar for bars in the 1 to 1.5" range. If you are increasing the sway bar stiffness, you should also increase the spring stiffness. Selecting springs that allow the bar to work excessively will put a lot of stress on the relatively flimsy mounting points of the bar.

So the general consensus is that the 1 1/4" up front and whatever in the rear is fine and better than the $400 for 1 3/8" setup front and rear. I have stock sways front and rear with ssm adjustable uppers and frame braces in the rear. I wanted better handling from my car and im either gonna go with Kyb's or Qa1's. Is it worth the money to step up the 1/8 of an inch in the rear sway? I already have the bushings for the front bar so i hink 1 1/4" is the way to go.

I don't know if this is a good price but Muscle Factory has 1" rear bars for $85. I think it is a good idea to "match" the front and rear bars. With a 1-1/8" or 1-1/4" front bar I'd use a 1" in the rear.

I used the BIG 1-3/8" sway bar set and really like it. I'm sure I would have been happy with the 1-1/4" also. I sure didn't spend $400 on the big ones from Hotchkis, but they were still expensive.

Another factor in using the big sway bar is they are hollow vs solid for the 1-1/4", and I sure don't mind dropping 1/2 the weight of a big metal bar off the front of my chevelle.

I bought the complete H-O Racing suspension kit, minus the shock absorbers.

1 3/8 (solid, not hollow) bars front and rear, Poly bushings, all new springs. No-Hop bars in the rear. Also added the tall spindle disc conversion they invented.

What can I say? I'm a believer. There's no going back.

Adams wrote a book (Chassis Engineering) about handling. His theory is stiff springs, little or no sway bar. He says it's counter productive to tie the suspension together with a sway bar, it interferes with the whole concept of "independent front (or rear, but that doesn't apply to us) suspension." Ok, a sway bar does tie together the suspension. But is it better to have "independent" suspension that becomes "no" suspension because of excessive spring stiffness?

I'm not Adams, I haven't written a book, and I don't have the cash loitering about my wallet to compare different suspension parts. I made a choice, paid my money, and am TOTALLY SATISFIED with "somewhat" stiffer springs and a BIGASS swaybar up front.

True enough, if I had it to do over, I'd consider using the truck arm rear suspension--but at the time I built the suspension, I had no idea the truck arms style could be grafted to an "A" body, or that it would be beneficial.

I would have to argue against excessively stiff springs. If the springs are too stiff, when the wheel encounters a bump or a dip it will raise or lower the entire car instead of letting the individual wheel move up and down over the bump or dip. The better theory is to use relatively soft springs (in racing terms) and anti sway bars in combination. This provides a best of both worlds combination.

How? The softer springs allow the wheel to move quickly over bumps and dips while maintaining a more constant contact with the ground. The anti sway bars restrict the car's tendency to lean to the outside in a turn due to the softer springs, so in other words, the bars only help when they are needed. Another positive side effect is that if one wheel encounters a large bump or dip, some of that energy is transferred to the sway bar instead of just to the single wheel's spring.

That said, it also needs to be pointed out that using too large of sway bars can put too much stiffness at the outside wheels in a hard turn. If you put too large of a bar in back, you can actually threaten to lift the inside rear wheel in a very hard turn (assuming your tires can provide that much traction). This can be especially true if the car has all poly bushings in back which takes some of the flexibility out of the suspension action, especially in situations where one side of the rear axle is noticably higher or lower than the other side such as in a hard turn.

I recall reading an article in Car & Driver years ago with two Camaros equal in every way except for the suspension set up. It was Adams against someone else whose name escapes me at the moment. Anyway, it was a situation of super stiff springs and no sway bars (Adams) vs. softer springs and big sway bars. The car with the softer springs and sway bars won in almost every category. In one or two insignificant categories on a perfectly prepared race track the Adams car provided slightly better numbers but the writers reported that the car was a total beast, wholly uncomfortable to drive (even on the track) and nearly undrivable on normal imperfect street conditions.

When it comse to suspensions, what works in all out racing situations where the road surface is as good as your are likely to get, rarely will those same techniques and set ups work well in real daily driven road conditions.

1-1/4 inch bar up front is probably the largest bar that should ever be used up front in an a-body driven on the street. Beyond that it's overkill and perhaps providing additional negatives.

The drawback of a soft spring and a stiff swaybar is that the bar tends to transfer the load from one side of the car to the other. If you hit a bump with one wheel it tends to pull the other wheel up with it.
When selecting swaybars front and rear you need to consider the roll coupling and the effect of the rear bar on traction out of the corner. Just because the car feels tighter and leans less doesn't mean that it will go around a corner faster. Here are a couple of interesting articles on swaybars:

http://www.houseofthud.com/cartech/swaybars.htm

http://members.aol.com/sccacuda/cars/CSmthTa.html

http://www.wtrscca.org/tech.htm

The other guy in that Camaro A-B test was Dick Guldstrand. And his big bar, soft spring car did beat the stiff spring, small bar car in just about every category tested. Herb's small/no bar deal is used in various kinds of racing where it works, but it's not something you'd want on a street car.

AFAIC, a big front bar is the best bang for buck improvement a guy can make on a Chevelle.

The Chevelle suspension was designed in the early 60's, it old technology as far as the front goes. It has a below ground level roll center, which is the main reason these cars corner like a tuna boat. The below ground level roll center deal is what the tall spindles fix. With the tall spindles a smaller bar can be used. This is actually the right way to fix the problem with handling on these cars, but not everbody has the time, skills, tools, money and shop to make that change. Meanwhile, from the drivers seat, the big bar approach works wonders even if it's not technically the "right" way to do it.

Tom (IMHO, YMMV, all that jazz)

Schurkey, I noticed after running searches when I first started coming to this site that have pretty much the same suspension. Hope I'm as satisfied as you when I finally get the car on the road. Are you using the SB-55 2nd genie F-body spindles, etc?

Yes, those are the same spindles I used. My spindles came off of a '75 Nova, along with the calipers, hoses, booster, Master cylinder, combo valve, etc, etc. Nova booster and front hoses on a Chevelle required some...ummm...rework. My labor is cheaper than new parts (that's what I tell myself, anyway) and I have a propensity towards being "frugal" which others would describe as "being cheap". If I was doing it over, I'd perhaps go with the 12" spindle/rotor combination, but hey, I owned a totaled '75 Nova at the time.

I bought 4-8"X16" Camaro IROC front wheels, and stuck P235 tires on 'em. Corners flat, stable, and harder than you'd expect with such "skinny" tires. Those tires do handicap the launch, though.

Originally posted by onovakind67:
The drawback of a soft spring and a stiff swaybar is that the bar tends to transfer the load from one side of the car to the other. If you hit a bump with one wheel it tends to pull the other wheel up with it.
When selecting swaybars front and rear you need to consider the roll coupling and the effect of the rear bar on traction out of the corner. Just because the car feels tighter and leans less doesn't mean that it will go around a corner faster. Here are a couple of interesting articles on swaybars:

http://www.houseofthud.com/cartech/swaybars.htm

http://members.aol.com/sccacuda/cars/CSmthTa.html

http://www.wtrscca.org/tech.htm When I said "softer springs" I mean in relative term, in racing terms. I wasn't suggesting that anyone install soft riding springs and big sway bars, I was merely suggesting that super stiff (full out racing) springs are NOT the way to go on a street car.

Those articles are full of very good information.

I used the stuff from the ex's '71 Camaro after it was wrecked. I hated that car and love free parts - it was a happy day (nobody hurt in the accident).

If I'm not mistaken the H-O (Malibu Performance)springs are stiffer than stock.

I put an 1-1/4 bar on the front of my 70 and it made a huge dif. BUT, remember to disconnect it when you go to the track. I forgot and I did a really ugly leap frog act down the track.