I have the rear 25mm RRE bar on the lightest setting with JIC's from (you guessed it) RRE and the car is very neutral and easy to rotate.

One of these days, I'll skip the middle setting and put it on full hard and do some donuts.

 

I like the Hotchkiss too, but it is 24mm and hollow. I can't see this sway bar being stiff enough.

 

They perform WELL. Hotchkiss has been in business for a while and doing well.

 

So true, the rear bar is the cheap easy way to balance the car (by reducing rear grip) but because you are improving the balance of the car you increase overall grip so it's still an improvement. Fixing the problem with springs and shocks is the real solution, but a more expensive time consuming one.

Even with the spring shock combos we've tried so far that 25mm bar is still back there and set fairly stiff. I hope to be able to lose it at some point with our incremental improvements in front bite.

 

Trust me it's stiff enough. It is 3 way adjustable and produces plenty of oversteer on the stiffest setting. I can't say how it compares to the RRE though.
Another nice feature is that the greased sway bushings have a grease fitting nipple so that they can be regreased easily without taking the bar off.

 

You may be completely correct and I admit I have no experience with either. In the end, I bought RRE's because I KNOW their's will work and they are a local shop that I support whenever possible. I don't want anyone to NOT pick the Hotchkiss bar because of anything I said, as I do not have personal experience with it.

 

I have a somewhat related question... When I went in to the alignment shop to get my Civic aligned for the track, they convinced me to take a bunch of negative camber out of the front, and point the rears straight up (they were at about 3 front and 1-1.5 rear). This way it'll get the rear end to rotate around on the car (it already has a big rear bar on it). The reason for this was two fold... reduce the rear grip so it rotates, and take the negative out of the front to balance the car out in the corner. It does feel more balanced now, and the rear end does want to come around, which you can modulate with the throttle (especially since it's FWD)...

Now, after reading what Paul has said about increasing the front end grip, along with the rear end grip is the better way to balance the car in the corners. It makes perfect sense to me... but to my question...

The other reason they said to take the front end camber out (it was at about 3 degrees or so) was to keep the car from wanting to "turn into" itself on the straights. This is because when you have the negative camber up front, the wheels want to turn naturally inwards, towards the lean. This also made sense to me, so who is correct? I guess since all of the RSX/TSX type cars in the World Challenge are running a ton of camber in the front, then that should be the same setup as what I should be running...

Anyone care to chime in? I would think that FWD suspension setup should be similar to an AWD vehicle... At least closer than a RWD vechile.

 

Where did you find 25mm Cusco rear sways for sale? I've looked everywhere, only saw 23mm ones available.

 

 

The 25mm is from RRE

 

I don't know if anyone mentioned this, but the RRE, Progress and Perrin 25mm rear bars are all the same with different mounting brackets and colors. That said, the RRE is the least expensive. The bar is about 14 lbs, how much lighter is the hollow Hotchkis design, and are the arms the same lenght or shorter than the other designs?

I use the Cusco, but as it's be said it is dependant on the front/rear spring rate ratio.

 

I weighed the Hotchkis and it was about 6lbs.

 

I got the RRE bar from Buschur Racing for $150.

Best thing for the money that I've done with the car, period.

Besides that Al Green CD, of course.

 

In terms of construction, the RRE bar has the tabs welded on at the bar ends, whereas the cusco is constructed all from one piece.

 

I'm no real suspension expert but I'll try and help. The reason you would want to run less negative camber would be to help with "balanced" tire wear for day to day driving. Ideally on the track you would want to run as much negative camber as possible in the front and balance out the rear negative camber to match the F/R weight distribution and the rates of the springs and shocks and the swaybar thickness .... usually in most stock cars that means more negative camber in the front and less in the rear.