Chevrolet Solutions

 

The only components left are endlinks and sway bars. The OEM endlinks are designed for OEM anticipated driving. The front endlink is 10mm and the rear is 8mm with modest sized ball joints. The front endlink is mounted high up on the strut or a high roll center mount. Connecting the sway bar high up on the strut increases the efficiency of the bar. It helps the car roll or lean less. The rear sway bar mount geometry is not as efficient. The endlinks mount well in board on the lower control arm making it far from ideal. This is arguably the weakest design feature of the ZETA and ZETA II architecture. The Camaro delivers with a staggered wheel and tire package and bars almost identical in size but not in function. This configuration creates a solid driving experience until the vehicle is pushed passed 7/10s. (When we say 7/10s what we are referencing is the absolute capacity of a car. Race cars are rarely driven at 10/10s. Driving that hard causes failures. You may see a race car being pushed to 10/10s for the last few laps of a close race. Racers spend most track time running n in the 7 to 9/10s range.) Generally automobile testing is done at 7/10s or below by OEMs. Of course there are exceptions. A Camaro at 7/10s is a very fast automobile. Press on past 7/10s and at this level of aggressive driving understeer becomes dominant. Continue to press the range and you can plow the North 40!

 

There are several solutions to this, but before we go there allow us to explain our philosophy on sway bars as the final tuning element to a suspension. Everything starts with foundational bushes. We have to have a stable foundation before we change or tweak anything in the suspension. That is why we always start with the weakest foundational bushes first. After the bushes come the coils and dampers. Now that the suspension is solid from the foundational level on up, we can tune with sway bars. Adding sway bars before any other key component is the same as placing a Band-Aid over a bleeding artery. It might look better. It might even feel better, but the foundational issues are still there.

 

The first step in upgrading sway bar function is to improve the endlink. Pedders 424218 Adjustable Endlinks are more robust at 12mm than the OEM 8mm and 10mm endlinks. They also use a large ball joint with a larger stud. Installing these on OEM bars requires drilling out the bar as well as the strut and lower control arm mounting brackets. While this is an improvement, it is not a solution. The solution is to increase the bar diameters. The question is how much should we increase them and for which type of driver?

Click here to download as PDF.