How do you decide which sway bars to go with?

[2wheels4me]

I highly recommended the Steedas, especially in comjunction with their linear springs and other suspension improvements (see signature below) that I have on my GTPP. Vastly improved handling.

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[POOPonYOU]

My 2 choices were between Steeda and BMR only.

I ended up going with Steeda for their sway bars and billet mounts. The quality is amazing. The front has 4 adjustments and the rear has 3. I just took my car to the Tail of the Dragon (381 turns in 11 miles) and the car was amazing in the turns. I could easily run up on stock GTPP cars in turns, the turn-in is very precise, very flat cornering and brake dive is essentially gone. I cannot recommend their components enough. David is great to work with. Ask him all the questions you want.

Here are a few pictures:

I know Steeda has always been blue. I wish they would come in red. I'm an aesthetics kinda of guy. I'm a big fan of Steeda which is why I'm going to end up with blue parts on my Race Red GT. :headbonk:

 

[Todd15Fastback]

I know Steeda has always been blue. I wish they would come in red. I'm an aesthetics kinda of guy. I'm a big fan of Steeda which is why I'm going to end up with blue parts on my Race Red GT. :headbonk:

LOL! The blue looks good on my Ingot car . We can call you Richard Petty Jr. with the red and blue

 

[bigspoondude]

Personally, I am more of a "soft spring, big bar" kinda guy.

You sound like a Whiteline rep. :headbonk:

 

[BMR Tech]

You sound like a Whiteline rep. :headbonk:

Everyone has their preferences, that is just mine.

Don't get me wrong, using an eleven-million lb/in spring is cool and all, but no thanks.

If I wanted a pure racecar (which I prefer big spring rates), I'd build it from the ground up, not go sign papers on a new one.

 

[rio16]

Everyone has their preferences, that is just mine.

Don't get me wrong, using an eleven-million lb/in spring is cool and all, but no thanks.

If I wanted a pure racecar (which I prefer big spring rates), I'd build it from the ground up, not go sign papers on a new one.

lol +1

 

[David@Steeda]

Happy to outline some key benefits of the Steeda sway bar kit. Our sway bars have machined steel billet sway bar ends, whereas others on the market have coined ends. What does this mean?

Our sway bar ends are machined out of billet steel round stock, in-house, on our multi-axis CNC lathes and go through hundreds of computer simulations to ensure the ultimate in strength and performance - this provides greater resistance to bending stresses, and has three major advantages:
- 1. These parts are less prone to cracking/fatigue failure on the ends themselves.
- 2. It also reduces unwanted deflection in the sway bar end. Excess deflection creates unwanted geometry changes, which physically changes your sway bar stiffness to a non-ideal rate. Unwanted deflection also slows down the response of the bar/suspension system in general as you have to wait for the part to deflect before it reaches its steady state spring rate for the respective maneuver. We put enough gap between the sway bar and the sway bar mount so under severe cornering it doesn’t put an artificial spring rate or bind into the suspension.
- 3. With less unwanted deflection, our bars will 'wear out’ slower - any spring will eventually become softer over time as it is cycled through its life, our bars will maintain their designed rate for longer with less unwanted deflection.

Welded sway bar ends are also less prone to failure around the welded area, coined sway bar ends create high-stress concentrations around the area where the tubes are crimped, therefore can fail under extreme conditions. In this area, the wall thickness of the tubes are actually thinner as they are stretched to make the bend - we view this as a weak link in the chain.

Our bars don’t include any, what we believe to be ‘unnecessary' hardware. With the welded stops we provide on our bar, there’s no worry about any chances for improper installation by our customers. There is also no need for the customer to worry about any billet hardware (included in some other kits) to come loose overtime.

Our parts have all their tolerances tightly controlled in-house, and all parts are thoroughly quality-inspected. This eliminates the possibility of receiving defective parts from the factory if you’re using a third-party supplier.

Lastly, our bar rates are developed and optimized through advanced vehicle dynamic simulation and through extensive real-world testing. We engineered these bars to control the vehicles' roll stiffness properly while still allowing you to run softer springs. This optimizes your overall grip and balance of the vehicle while still allowing you to maintain exceptional ride quality.

Having custom end links is a great addition to this package and we have some on the way, however our bars work with the stock end links in every form which allows you to take home the same performance without the need to swap the end links as well. I’m sure BMR’s end links work great in the meantime, though.

Most importantly, we have never seen our sway bar billet ends fail, yet we have seen coined ends fail. Also, aftermarket bars are much stiffer than OE, so why would you want an OE-style coined end when a billet end is stronger and better suited for the beefier bar?

Will the average customer be happy with either option? Most likely, just wanted to provide a bit more technical info to let the customer make an informed decision. And as Kelly had mentioned, sway bars can and should be tuned to your liking and your driving needs. Factor in the plethora of other IRS components, and the combinations start adding up! Which I think is great, you have full control over the type of setup you select based on your needs.

 

[mtpavelka]

How do these aftermarket sway bars compare to the stock EBM PP bars?

BMR - Do you a time line for springs for the EBM?

 

[BMR Tech]

Happy to outline some key benefits of the Steeda sway bar kit. Our sway bars have machined steel billet sway bar ends, whereas others on the market have coined ends. What does this mean?

Our sway bar ends are machined out of billet steel round stock, in-house, on our multi-axis CNC lathes and go through hundreds of computer simulations to ensure the ultimate in strength and performance - this provides greater resistance to bending stresses, and has three major advantages:
- 1. These parts are less prone to cracking/fatigue failure on the ends themselves.
- 2. It also reduces unwanted deflection in the sway bar end. Excess deflection creates unwanted geometry changes, which physically changes your sway bar stiffness to a non-ideal rate. Unwanted deflection also slows down the response of the bar/suspension system in general as you have to wait for the part to deflect before it reaches its steady state spring rate for the respective maneuver. We put enough gap between the sway bar and the sway bar mount so under severe cornering it doesn’t put an artificial spring rate or bind into the suspension.
- 3. With less unwanted deflection, our bars will 'wear out’ slower - any spring will eventually become softer over time as it is cycled through its life, our bars will maintain their designed rate for longer with less unwanted deflection.

Welded sway bar ends are also less prone to failure around the welded area, coined sway bar ends create high-stress concentrations around the area where the tubes are crimped, therefore can fail under extreme conditions. In this area, the wall thickness of the tubes are actually thinner as they are stretched to make the bend - we view this as a weak link in the chain.

Very good info.

That said, it isn't all/just about strength, or you would be defending your solid spring steel bars like some other companies do.

Our bars don’t include any, what we believe to be ‘unnecessary' hardware. With the welded stops we provide on our bar, there’s no worry about any chances for improper installation by our customers. There is also no need for the customer to worry about any billet hardware (included in some other kits) to come loose overtime.

Our parts have all their tolerances tightly controlled in-house, and all parts are thoroughly quality-inspected. This eliminates the possibility of receiving defective parts from the factory if you’re using a third-party supplier.

We provide very nice Grade 10.9 Allen Head Bolts for our front sway bar mounting, simply because the Billet Aluminum Mounts (that come standard with our kit) are too nice for the OEM Bolts. Actually, that is part of the reason - but the other reasons are due to the ease of damaging the threads on the front mounting bolts when R&R them, and the fact we design our Billet Saddles for Allen Head Bolts.

Your welded stops on the rear, they cannot be the same on each vehicle. We had welded stops on our first batch of bars, and we changed to a billet stop design simply because we want them to fit properly - every time.

This is not consistently proper: (just a few different shots of cars with your bars)






Those are just a few pics I have from when I was experiencing different results with our welded stops, and researched to see what others were doing. Apparently, everyone is putting the stops a little more narrow to compensate for the width tolerances on the OEM Cradle.

That is why we chose to provide a Billet Stop Ring, so the customer can set the stop where he/she pleases. We have experienced issues in the past with gaps like in the pictures above.

Lastly, our bar rates are developed and optimized through advanced vehicle dynamic simulation and through extensive real-world testing. We engineered these bars to control the vehicles' roll stiffness properly while still allowing you to run softer springs. This optimizes your overall grip and balance of the vehicle while still allowing you to maintain exceptional ride quality.

Same here, great companies think alike.

Having custom end links is a great addition to this package and we have some on the way, however our bars work with the stock end links in every form which allows you to take home the same performance without the need to swap the end links as well. I’m sure BMR’s end links work great in the meantime, though.

We have exceeded the strength of the OEM Links on our test cars, and also have several customer who have as well.

Of course, these were on applications with mild coil spring rates, and sticky tires on road courses.

Most importantly, we have never seen our sway bar billet ends fail, yet we have seen coined ends fail. Also, aftermarket bars are much stiffer than OE, so why would you want an OE-style coined end when a billet end is stronger and better suited for the beefier bar?

We have never had a failure with our Hollow Mustang Sway Bars that have coined ends.

Rest assured, if that is/were to happen then we would quickly resolve the issue by re-engineering the bends in the bar.

We offer both coined and billet end designs, for various platforms, so we are no strangers to billet end pieces on bars.

 

[Gibbo205]

As the BMR bars are hollow do they weigh less than the stock PP bars?

Am I right in thinking Steeda and FRPP bars are both solid and hence weighing a lot more?

 

[bam2002]

So I am searching for a thread the compares the material and size of the sway bars.
The PP ones are solid ? what size.

The Same for Steeda and BMR?

thanks

 

[Zerobar78]

I'm debating on which bars to go with right now, it seems so far that a rear hollow bar is better for a street tire setup and if you go with slicks that a solid bar works better. As for brand this can vary, it seems as though BMR is the only hollow bar. Steeds makes great stuff and I had their bars on my new edge, but Whitlines are coming and they make really nice stuff too, theirs appear to be solid bars.

Guess it all depends on what you want to do with the car in the future, but as your post puts it some hollow bars seems like they may best fit your needs.

 

[Gibbo205]

So I am searching for a thread the compares the material and size of the sway bars.
The PP ones are solid ? what size.

The Same for Steeda and BMR?

thanks

Can't remember sizes, but front FRPP bar is hollow and the rear bar is solid.

Both BMR and Steeda bars are all hollow front and rear.

 

[Moddiction]

How big of a difference do these make to handling feel compared to GT PP sways?

Coming from a highly modded S2000 of course the tightness and handling of this car feels sloppy and heavy. I'm looking to reduce body roll. Even pp has a good amount it seems. Especially from the rear.

 

[Cloak]

How big of a difference do these make to handling feel compared to GT PP sways?

Coming from a highly modded S2000 of course the tightness and handling of this car feels sloppy and heavy. I'm looking to reduce body roll. Even pp has a good amount it seems. Especially from the rear.

as a fellow previous s2000 owner, my goal is to get the stang to carve the corners like that little thing did!

I just ordered BMR sways, and BMR cb005 irs lockout kit.

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