Anyone got a Sway-Bar installed? Care to voice opinions???

[pologti18t]

If you were to be more track orientated then you would get the coilovers with matched dampening and just slightly larger bars as you want the dampened coilover to do most of the work with just little hep with the sway bars to tune out oversteer or understeer.

I think that fixing suspensions "issues" (ie understeer) on a FWD road car with just a rear antiroll bar can be a recipe for disaster IF the car isn't fitted with ESP. At the limit the rear of the car becomes a lot twitchier and the ability/time to correct is reduced.
I had a whiteline rear ARB on the back of my Astra SRI (no esp). Yes it pointed into corners alot better but one sudden swerve (soon after it was fitted) on a highway (kangaroo) showed it's negative side effects. The back came round so quickly and unexpectantly it scared the crap out of me. Needless to say I knew from then on to treat it with respect (much like a Pug 306GTI i owned - DC2 Type R is similar).

The time people will mostly likely caught out (with ESP off) is coming into a corner too hot and backing off the throttle mid corner. The back MAY come round very quickly with little or no opportunity to correct. This behavior has been tuned OUT of most FWD cars nowadays. For most drivers its not second nature to keep the throttle steady or reapply it in this situation.

[kaanage]

Absolutely correct. People complain about cars having an understeering response but the truth is that most people cannot handle liftoff oversteer and the stiffer the rear roll stiffness is vs the front, the more savage will be the oversteer.

Particularly bad (and not hard to get into) is the case where you enter a downhill turn that is sharper than you anticipated - it is instinctive to at least lift off the throttle in this situation and a car that is not heavily biased towards understeer (in normal circumstances) can easily spin. Even ESP would not necessarily save you in this situation if the corner is tight enough or you enter hot enough.

That said, Whiteline was referring to people who wish to track their cars and you would hope that these people would have some idea of what their vehicle response would be and, even better, would adjust their car back to more understeer when putting it back into road use mode.

[pologti18t]

Particularly bad (and not hard to get into) is the case where you enter a downhill turn that is sharper than you anticipated - it is instinctive to at least lift off the throttle in this situation and a car that is not heavily biased towards understeer (in normal circumstances) can easily spin. Even ESP would not necessarily save you in this situation if the corner is tight enough or you enter hot enough.

I had exactly that experience driving a friends Integra Type R on Thunderbolts way. I wasn't overly familiar with the car. Came to a downhill, off camber corner with a tightening radius.... backed off the throttle and immediately the rear started to come round! Luckily I knew to reapply the power smoothly to counteract this (from Pug 306 experience). Apparently the Type R of his had some dodgey rear toe-in that magnified the issue. If no correction was taken it would have been an impact with a rock face

Most drivers, brought up on a diet of average FWD hatchbacks, would have no idea what the heck was going on.

I found with the Astra the best way to get a nice consistant improvement in turn in etc was to fit adjustable dampers (Koni Yellows). Give the rear a couple of extra clicks of rebound and add some camber bolts to the front end (not applicable to the Polo). Transformed the car... it would devour potholed country roads.

[Bassik]

Comparing with Type R the Polo has come pretty close to what I wanted. Still think the teg has better steering but with no ESP it was a lot more rawer. The Polo I can now throw into a corner and not fear oversteer.

Think I mentioned this before but has anyone installed 5mm 10mm spacers to the rear of the Polo...??

If so what do you reckon?

[gavs]

I'm a big believer of the idiom that if people don't understand what they are doing to their car and the effect it can have then they shouldn't do it. Yes, this is narrow minded but this is why I don't rush out telling everyone to do what I have done, don't really enjoy the opposite narrow minded opinion of when things go wrong that it's never that persons fault.

[Bassik]

I know little to nothing about cars. What I do know is it's a lot better after having the sway bar installed

[Bassik]

Anyone got the front sway bar installed?

[Guy_H]

We have, personally I would install them as a pair only, the balance of the car is pretty good standard, putting more "tip" into the front end actually makes the car slower on the track (might "feel" a bit better at 50kmph on the street though)

Good news, we released our new versions today

APR - High Performance Development for Audi, VW and Porsche Vehicles.

[cstb_87]

Hey Guy, do you only sell the APR sway bars as a set?

[Bassik]

Hey Guy, do you only sell the APR sway bars as a set?

Yeah I'm interested as to know if you only sell as a set too?. I was only looking on your website today and noticed you didn't have sway bars so good but bad timing. I've already got a whiteline anti rear sway bar, I'll be a tad pee'd if you only sold as set.

Another thing im interested to know was how tight did anyone do up the rear bar? I recently went back and changed the setting to tightest and noticed the nuts were a little loose, I started tightening them and they just keep going without any tension.