I have hotchkiss front and rear bars on my X and they're both set to full stiff. After doing 1 track event with them in this setting, i was debating on moving the fronts down to soft to get rid of some understeer at the limit. Being too lazy to do this, i decided i'd auto-x and decide how they feel then.

Towards the end of my auto-x i noticed that oversteer was dramatically more present, and for some reason the front end feels way softer than it did before. It doesn't feel as if it had the same bite as before. Is it normal for swaybars to loosen up or be 'broken in'? I've never heard of this before so it's a little concerning.

Visual inspection of the bar shows endlinks are still in tact and on strong. Coils showing no signs of leaking ( i suspected a leak leading to softer compression too).

 

Thinking the coil overs are the cause-- Don't know what your using, could it be that as the coilovers heat up and rebound and compression are softer as a result.--. That's my theory-- cant see how spring steel would degrade in such a short period--and it certainly wouldn't recover. Keep us posted.

 

Robispec KW clubsport Coils are pretty used. Picked them up with 40~k on the clock. One of the shock bodies was cracked and leaking oil when i bought it. Sent to KW for a full rebuild on all 4. I've put about 6k miles on the coils since then including 3 trackdays and 3 auto-x's.

I'll double check the compression on my coils later and go for another drive. If the swaybar has a defect of some sort, i'm sure it'll be failing catastrophically sometime soon.

 

My guess is that you finally got enough heat into the front tires for them to have grip and/or the heating finally got the front pressures up to where the sidewall stopped rolling over ... and that this has zero to do with the bars.

 

my trackday was running 37.5 psi hot all 4 corners. Auto x was running 36 psi front and 37 psi rear. All hot pressures. I say hot loosely because auto-x doesn't get tires very hot.

Oh! I also installed the cusco rear strut bar but i highly doubt it makes that much of a difference.

 

36 is rather low for the fronts of a front-heavy car on streets when autocrossing. (You are on streets, yes?)

Also, if you're not gaining 2 psi on the first run, then your region has short courses or you're not doing it right.

 

I'm running michelin PSS. It was rather cold for a texas day and heat didn't really build as much as it normally does. THe course was a 35 sec course too, so not much i could do there.

 

I would expect this to make a difference - it, in effect, stiffened the rear bar (made it more effective/less slack to take up, if you will...)

Have you pushed sideways on the front of the car to see how much (if any) play there is? I would have said check the torques on the end links - but it sounds like you already did...

 

If I can be my blunt self, setting up a car for 35-second autocross courses is a complete and utter waste of time. That's the kind of event I would only do for social reasons.

 

Hahaha i'm not going to disagree with you. I don't setup my car for auto-x, i setup my car for the track and practice driving techniques and manipulating the car at its limit in auto-x's. Its great practice. There's a guy with a well built STU subie that is consistently half a second faster on these 35 sec courses, and i don't even care. Not even a little bit.

On the flipside, at the track, i havn't met a subie yet that i can't overtake. That says a lot considering some of the sti's i play with are fully built w/ upgraded turbos, full suspension, and drivers with loads of seat time.

 

This is odd. I don't recall ever seeing your taillights, though I believe I've showed you mine. . . (on my base map)

 

HAhahaha, is this who i think it is?!?! I've only passed you once, and it was when your new build was giving you tons of trouble at MSR cresson. I guess i forgot about you in my example.

BTW did you seriously just sign up so you can comment??? lol.... PM me.

 

For the record, i found the problem. Problem was 2 fold. ACD line had air in it causing my setup to be mostly RWD, and the front rebound settings were somehow 'between' clicks, forcing rebound to be insanely higher than it should be causing the front to bite way too much. It was kinda twitchy.

 

Michelin Pilot SS have the worst sidewall rolling I've ever encountered on a tire labeled 'performance'. I had them on my car for a week, wife said 'did you break your car' so I took them back to Discount Tire and got some RE-11's I think (Bridgestone) which are very close to the stock Advans.

 

Please don't write this sort of thing. Now all of the people who still believe that the ACD can alter the native torque split will be jumping up and down, screaming "I knew it!"