Is it safe to disconnect the antiroll bar?

PowerLee · Post by **PowerLee** » 05 Apr 2005, 02:46

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">Hmmmm..... but doesn't that resolve down into a reality like as in Railtrack and a train passenger?
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">
Just think, Theres railway track out there at least 35 years old thats perfectly safe & passes all the ultrasonic safety test they carry out.
Compare that with the awful poor quality steel now used that sometimes struggles to last 6 months!
Blame Railtrack for skimping on poor quality materials, It was never like that back in British Rails days.
On the other hand it keeps my mate in a job replacing track, lol

VisaGTi16v · Post by **VisaGTi16v** » 05 Apr 2005, 03:17

Something on the front of his zx must be shot, either that or he has useless budget tyres or has only had rear wheel drive cars before. Things like the lower arm bushes make a hell of a difference. I replaced all the shocks, roll bar etc and had decent tyres on my old 16v but it still got worse and understeered more because the lower arm bushes were totally shot. If his reason for removing his front roll bar is because he heard an american talking about a race car then he clearly doesnt have much idea im afraid and should just take it a garage before he does himself or someone else an injury on the road!

DarkendViper · Post by **DarkendViper** » 05 Apr 2005, 03:28

I own a 2.0i ZX. When i got it the front wishbone bushes were gone. There was 2-3 cm of movement in each direction. I changed them and that sharpened the handling up considerably. When i did this i had some really cheap remoulds on for tires. They were on when i got it. I changed these to Yokohama's and now it oversteers if your not use to it. I can only get understeer in 2 situations. 1) in the wet and 2) pushing stupid speeds round roundabouts.
The ZX is a good handling car, when the front end is setup and running perfect. I bet that the front P bushes are shot. Mine had ovalised (think I just made that up

the hole and allowed a lot of movement.
Ste
PS What car was your friend driving before this?

oscarloco · Post by **oscarloco** » 05 Apr 2005, 04:54

He used to drive an old '86 Honda Civic Shuttle. He got the idea of a ZX one day I gave him a ride. Now he lives too far away to visit him so I haven't sampled his car to see if indeed it understeers.

FrenchLeave · Post by **FrenchLeave** » 05 Apr 2005, 05:09

Time for some definitions:
Understeer - you go through the hedge frontwards;
Oversteer - you go through the hedge backwards.

oilyspanner · Post by **oilyspanner** » 05 Apr 2005, 15:02

The steering rear end on ZXs can make the car feel like its oversteering if the rubbers are a bit soft, perhaps its that sensation your mate is feeling?
Stewart

ActivaV6uk · Post by **ActivaV6uk** » 05 Apr 2005, 16:26

there is something that can be done to get rid of understear. you have to replace the rear subframe mounts for solid ones. The car has rear wheel stear which in the performance market is stated due to performance drivers saying that the car dose not go ware it should do under most conditions.
It sounds like your friend is young and probably not the safest driver. i assume that from ware you come from some of the roads may be pretty open and there as here in the past people do like to play (in the late 50-s and early 60's my ddad has times that he made daily journeys that are not possible now because of the lack of traffic in this area (15 minutes to almost the other side of birmingham from redditch this now takes nearly an hour! and in a low speck mini!), if he wants some fun for the tracks i would sujest he goes to the 306 gti 6 sites and reads up on waht modifications they make to get there car to a performance level. with out stifening up the shocks and springs removeing the ARB is not wise.
The solid rear mounts are avalalbe from Peugeot/Citroen sport as part of there performance options.
Andy

fastandfurryous · Post by **fastandfurryous** » 05 Apr 2005, 17:16

The reason that rally drivers remove anti-roll bars is to increase axle articulation, thus keeping the tyre in contact with the road more of the time. This is also why "proper" off-road vehicles, such as the early Range Rover, Disco, and any series LandRover do not have anti roll bars (front or back). What an anti-roll bar does is to "artificially" stiffen the suspension in situations of axle articulation (cornering is one of these situations) but leave the actual stiffness of the suspension unchanged.
I used to drive an X1/9 which did not have any anti-roll bars fitted as the roll centre of the car was so high that it barely rolled in cornering anyway.
Whilst it would *probably* be ok to remove an anti-roll bar, you are indeed playing with fire, as the suspension will not operate as the manufacturer intended. You may get unexpected effects in high speed bends (such as underdamping, which is bloody scary) and MR. MOT will start asking questions, like "where the hell is the anti-roll bar?".
Unless you fully understand critical damping, springing rates, Stiffnes of steel, roll centre height, body stiffness, and the effect of spring seperation, leave it all well alone, and just fix it if it breaks.

ActivaV6uk · Post by **ActivaV6uk** » 05 Apr 2005, 17:37

If you want to understand the above there is a good document on the yahoo Locost group you may want to read on suspension setups and road holding with calculations for things like grip.
Andy

bxbodger · Post by **bxbodger** » 05 Apr 2005, 18:10

Removing/disconnecting it would be a bit silly, and would be an MOT failure, and goodness knows what any insurance company or accident investigator would make of it- this is the sort of thing that leads to insurers not paying out and your mate being personally liable for the repairs to Mr moneybag's Bentley if he should crash into it through too much understeer-his real problem is probably that he just maybe drives too fast and expects too much of what is basically a very average family car.
The real solution is to go a bit slower round the bends!!!
Having said that,however, BL hydragas/hydrolastic cars never had anti-roll bars at all and worked perfectly well, and when I had Maestro's the anti-roll bar bush holders were a known weak point on early ones and usually broke with such regularity you never replaced them until MOT time.
I never noticed any difference to the handling other than the knocking of the broken joint.......but then I don't go particularly fast.

ActivaV6uk · Post by **ActivaV6uk** » 05 Apr 2005, 18:15

the guy lives in Guatemala dont think an Mot is a problem doubt insurence is eather.., and there are no UK people considering this (i hope).

AlWilliams · Post by **AlWilliams** » 05 Apr 2005, 18:35

Another possible reason could be shot ARB bearings, when I replaced mine it improved the front end stability, with a marked increase in grip on roundabouts and stwisty stuff etc. Also stopped the thudds and bangs when going over pot holes.
Which was nice!

ItDontGo · Post by **ItDontGo** » 05 Apr 2005, 21:15

Rally cars use their tyres differently than track cars. Rally cars score a groove in the loose gravel with the outside wheel to generate grip on loose ground. This is why they want more weight transfer to the outside wheel and hence do away with the anti-roll bar which distributes the weight more evenly between the wheels on the axle. A car driven on asphalt is better off having the loads more evenly distributed between the wheels on the axle. That means that not just one tyre will be working hard. For a race car this is important as it means that the softest tyres can be used.
Anti-roll bars only affect the handling during a change in suspension travel. Once driving a constant radius corner the roll bar will have almost no affect other than helping a tyre from being overloaded. You can adjust the roll bars to give you a more stable turn-in or exit and things like that.
To play with handling you are better off adjusting overall front and rear grip by adjusting tyre pressures. Reducing all pressures front and rear will increase oversteer and vice-versa.
Citroen will have set their car with a stiff front end and a soft rear. They will have combined this with a high rear roll centre and a lower front roll centre. This is why their road cars have a sharp turn in but are still very stable. If you make the front roll centre lower by removing the front anti-roll bar it will be more likely to get turn-in oversteer requiring a smoother (better) driver.

VisaGTi16v · Post by **VisaGTi16v** » 05 Apr 2005, 21:31

Off topic, so what is "not going" with your 16v?

Kowalski · Post by **Kowalski** » 05 Apr 2005, 22:00

Anti-roll bars don't adjust the weight distribution to the wheels, they adjust the suspension load distribution on the suspension elements i.e. the springs. The weight distribution to the wheels is fixed by the height of the centre of mass, the cornering speed and the track of the car. This is fairly basic physics.
All an anti roll bar does really is to passively firm up the suspension on one side of the car when the suspension on that side is compressed more than the other side, you can think of it as a torsion bar spring really.