thebeansoldier
Member
- :
- '02 Honda S2000
< taken from my ramblings @ M3F's "Rear Sway Bar Showdown" >
Comparisons based on Kumho ASX + Eibach Pro kit + GT-Spec Rear Lower Tie Bar
- the Racing Beat bar is a massive 12lb (with clamps) and is thicker than any costco hotdog you can buy....
- Progress is 8lbs (with clamps)
- Haven't weighed the stock yet, but it's very light (6lbs maybe?)
oh, anyone drive without their rear sway bar? I stripped an endlink nut and ended up driving around town looking for a replacement nuts and anything that can get out a stripped nut. Holding a swaybar with an attached endlink walking up and down the screw/nuts aisle of Home Depot was not peachy! Perfectly safe in my 3 anyway, and when I did push it it felt like the car's nose was trying to dive down but couldn't go far enough cause of the stiffer springs. I tried that gator grip (too short), vice grip (made the nut even rounder), so my last resort was a $3 file so i straightened out the nut enough to get it to turn one last time to get it out. [update: Got new, bigger nuts from Napa]
With the RB, i seem to have lost some of my "mad oversteer". The rear kept still and when I did push hard it it felt like the inside rear wheel went up. At another place where I normally induce on-throttle oversteer, the oversteer came suddenly-- wasn't as slow as the progress. I'm not sure what to make of that yet. I'll be driving it through curvy roads tomorrow and see how it trail brakes. Overall, the first day of driving makes the rear better planted, while the progress makes the rear feel more loose and fun to oversteer. Possible cause? The shifting of my 1st version progress could be causing this- shifting the weight from side to side which is causing easily induced oversteer. Whoever gets my progress bar is going to be one lucky sob
Oh, if you're just driving without a rear sway bar, every time you go up a speed bump, you hear a "squish" sound from the front (like the kind you hear in the rear when it goes up a bump- what people think is a dry bushing). The front "squish" went away after i put in the rear. That could help someone trying to find out what bushing causes that sound.
You don't need to jiggle the crap out of the rear stock sway bar to make it come out, just unbolt one of the end-links and take out the bar in less than 5 seconds. Not 30-40minutes of end-link yoga to get the bar out.
Quick tip for those who are planning to install rear sway bars for the first time: When you know you're oversteering, don't look at where you're oversteering into. Look at where you want the car to go.
This is an "enthusiast's" review of both the Progress and Racing Beat rear bars. It will probably just appeal to them
I said hours awhile back that the rear felt more stable. Now I know why:
Trail Braking
It turns out the Racing Beat bar added about a 20mph more of adheshion to my trail braking "limit". With the Progress, the same curves normally would have the rear lose traction at 40-45mph during trail braking (lose traction, oversteer, swing and you can hear the tires go "SSSSSSSSSSHHHHH". i have wide tires- they don't squeal ). With the Racing Beat, It kept the rear planted [VERY minimal oversteer] until I finally got it up to 60mph, which finally made the rears really break traction and oversteer. I managed to make it understeer several times-- but this was at 60mph, the Progress would understeer way before that. BIG Points to the RB for safety. Racing Beat >> Progress v1
On-Throttle
I easily adjusted to the Racing Beat's quicker oversteer of on-throttle (like gassing-in out of a turn, the rear slowly swings). Approach a nice turn on 4th , then just before you begin the turn, downshift to 3rd and throttle in hard to release the peak torque to power the hell out of it. Very easy to do but still requires concentration. Sometimes, when you take a turn as a "normal driver", you get a very tame and predictable oversteer with both the Progress and and Racing Beat. Racing Beat = Progress v1
Off-throttle
During a turn, as you give more steering input, let off the throttle a little bit or all the way quickly, and it oversteers a little. Off throttle wasn't as fun in the RB as with the Progress due to the unusually better traction the RB provides. The longest off-throttle oversteer I got at 40mph was about almost 3 seconds, then the rear tires would grab the road again almost abuptly- feels like you tapped the brake pedal very lightly (gotta work on how to manipulate that). The progress gave at least 3 secs then gradually increased traction after that (very smooth). Smooth is good so Racing Beat < Progress v1
So far, from an enthusiast's stand point, the Racing Beat > Progress just because of the safety issue. I have a feeling the Racing Beat bar will do really well on wet roads. With stock, the rear tires stayed put. With the Progress, it felt like the rears were on skiis during many turns. Lots of fun when there are no cars like at 10pm-12am, but I always drive carefully when I see them or when i have a passenger and the road's still wet.
< several days later >
Rain Oversteer :
I first tried to get a feel for the rear wet traction by swaying left to right several times on the freeway. That was very promising as at 70mph, on wet, the rears don't feel like they're holding as well on the Progress. Based on this experience, after i got off the freeway, I took a good wide angle curve at about 50+mph for my favorite 4-3 on-throttle oversteer. At about 40mph in that same spot, the progress swings the rear immediately. With the better traction provided by the RB, the oversteer was perfectly smooth.
Passenger:
Going through the same curves I went through for the trail-braking test, with 2 different passengers, I got basically the same reactions I noticed my gf finally learned to brace herself by firmly planting both feet on the floor, but I still heard the occasional, "oh my god"s, and "whoa!". The drive with my friend just had him holding on to that jesus bar, and yelling "oh sh*t, man!" and "jeezus f*ck!" most of the turns, he wasn't sitting like my gf, but he should know better. I managed to trail brake while 1 passenger's on board at around 50mph, which was pretty good cause my friend is almost 200lbs.
Now for the more important, info from Racing Beat's Jim Langer:
Thanks for the kind words regarding the bar. Jim [Mederer] is a firm believer in "big sway bars"! He usually designs them as a matched pair that offers improved and fairly neutral handling characteristics for each application. Yes, the addition of only the rear bar will remove much understeer from your car, but we have not tested the installation of only the rear bar for any undesirable handling effects for street driving.
Adding only a larger bar to the front of a vehicle will lead to much more understeer, particularly on a front-wheel-drive car. FWD cars typically have a fair amount of understeer due to the weight of the engine and transaxle being positioned so far forward in the vehicle. This handling characteristic also offers safer handling - if the car starts to push in the middle of a corner (the nose drives towards the outside of the turn), reducing speed tends to allow the car to steer through the car. On the other hand, adding only a larger rear bar may reduce some of the understeer, but in some case it might produce oversteer. Having people spin off into the bushes while entering the freeway is something that the OEM's (and the aftermarket) would rather avoid. The weight of the bars do not factor into the handling performance. (On a racing vehicle where weight reduction is desirable, this may be more of a factor.)
Mazda has buried the mounting brackets of the Mazda 3 and 6 DEEP inside the car, access is very limited. I do not have any word on [rear] links for this application.
Jim Mederer, Racing Beat's co-founder and chief engineer for review:
The "3" bars were developed to work together, and I would not recommend using one without the other. The adjustability of the bars was based on our analysis of the load and angularity issues of each bar. We prefer adjustability in a bar if it is practical.
Jim Mederer
Comparisons based on Kumho ASX + Eibach Pro kit + GT-Spec Rear Lower Tie Bar
- the Racing Beat bar is a massive 12lb (with clamps) and is thicker than any costco hotdog you can buy....
- Progress is 8lbs (with clamps)
- Haven't weighed the stock yet, but it's very light (6lbs maybe?)
oh, anyone drive without their rear sway bar? I stripped an endlink nut and ended up driving around town looking for a replacement nuts and anything that can get out a stripped nut. Holding a swaybar with an attached endlink walking up and down the screw/nuts aisle of Home Depot was not peachy! Perfectly safe in my 3 anyway, and when I did push it it felt like the car's nose was trying to dive down but couldn't go far enough cause of the stiffer springs. I tried that gator grip (too short), vice grip (made the nut even rounder), so my last resort was a $3 file so i straightened out the nut enough to get it to turn one last time to get it out. [update: Got new, bigger nuts from Napa]
With the RB, i seem to have lost some of my "mad oversteer". The rear kept still and when I did push hard it it felt like the inside rear wheel went up. At another place where I normally induce on-throttle oversteer, the oversteer came suddenly-- wasn't as slow as the progress. I'm not sure what to make of that yet. I'll be driving it through curvy roads tomorrow and see how it trail brakes. Overall, the first day of driving makes the rear better planted, while the progress makes the rear feel more loose and fun to oversteer. Possible cause? The shifting of my 1st version progress could be causing this- shifting the weight from side to side which is causing easily induced oversteer. Whoever gets my progress bar is going to be one lucky sob
Oh, if you're just driving without a rear sway bar, every time you go up a speed bump, you hear a "squish" sound from the front (like the kind you hear in the rear when it goes up a bump- what people think is a dry bushing). The front "squish" went away after i put in the rear. That could help someone trying to find out what bushing causes that sound.
You don't need to jiggle the crap out of the rear stock sway bar to make it come out, just unbolt one of the end-links and take out the bar in less than 5 seconds. Not 30-40minutes of end-link yoga to get the bar out.
Quick tip for those who are planning to install rear sway bars for the first time: When you know you're oversteering, don't look at where you're oversteering into. Look at where you want the car to go.
This is an "enthusiast's" review of both the Progress and Racing Beat rear bars. It will probably just appeal to them
I said hours awhile back that the rear felt more stable. Now I know why:
Trail Braking
It turns out the Racing Beat bar added about a 20mph more of adheshion to my trail braking "limit". With the Progress, the same curves normally would have the rear lose traction at 40-45mph during trail braking (lose traction, oversteer, swing and you can hear the tires go "SSSSSSSSSSHHHHH". i have wide tires- they don't squeal ). With the Racing Beat, It kept the rear planted [VERY minimal oversteer] until I finally got it up to 60mph, which finally made the rears really break traction and oversteer. I managed to make it understeer several times-- but this was at 60mph, the Progress would understeer way before that. BIG Points to the RB for safety. Racing Beat >> Progress v1
On-Throttle
I easily adjusted to the Racing Beat's quicker oversteer of on-throttle (like gassing-in out of a turn, the rear slowly swings). Approach a nice turn on 4th , then just before you begin the turn, downshift to 3rd and throttle in hard to release the peak torque to power the hell out of it. Very easy to do but still requires concentration. Sometimes, when you take a turn as a "normal driver", you get a very tame and predictable oversteer with both the Progress and and Racing Beat. Racing Beat = Progress v1
Off-throttle
During a turn, as you give more steering input, let off the throttle a little bit or all the way quickly, and it oversteers a little. Off throttle wasn't as fun in the RB as with the Progress due to the unusually better traction the RB provides. The longest off-throttle oversteer I got at 40mph was about almost 3 seconds, then the rear tires would grab the road again almost abuptly- feels like you tapped the brake pedal very lightly (gotta work on how to manipulate that). The progress gave at least 3 secs then gradually increased traction after that (very smooth). Smooth is good so Racing Beat < Progress v1
So far, from an enthusiast's stand point, the Racing Beat > Progress just because of the safety issue. I have a feeling the Racing Beat bar will do really well on wet roads. With stock, the rear tires stayed put. With the Progress, it felt like the rears were on skiis during many turns. Lots of fun when there are no cars like at 10pm-12am, but I always drive carefully when I see them or when i have a passenger and the road's still wet.
< several days later >
Rain Oversteer :
I first tried to get a feel for the rear wet traction by swaying left to right several times on the freeway. That was very promising as at 70mph, on wet, the rears don't feel like they're holding as well on the Progress. Based on this experience, after i got off the freeway, I took a good wide angle curve at about 50+mph for my favorite 4-3 on-throttle oversteer. At about 40mph in that same spot, the progress swings the rear immediately. With the better traction provided by the RB, the oversteer was perfectly smooth.
Passenger:
Going through the same curves I went through for the trail-braking test, with 2 different passengers, I got basically the same reactions I noticed my gf finally learned to brace herself by firmly planting both feet on the floor, but I still heard the occasional, "oh my god"s, and "whoa!". The drive with my friend just had him holding on to that jesus bar, and yelling "oh sh*t, man!" and "jeezus f*ck!" most of the turns, he wasn't sitting like my gf, but he should know better. I managed to trail brake while 1 passenger's on board at around 50mph, which was pretty good cause my friend is almost 200lbs.
Now for the more important, info from Racing Beat's Jim Langer:
Thanks for the kind words regarding the bar. Jim [Mederer] is a firm believer in "big sway bars"! He usually designs them as a matched pair that offers improved and fairly neutral handling characteristics for each application. Yes, the addition of only the rear bar will remove much understeer from your car, but we have not tested the installation of only the rear bar for any undesirable handling effects for street driving.
Adding only a larger bar to the front of a vehicle will lead to much more understeer, particularly on a front-wheel-drive car. FWD cars typically have a fair amount of understeer due to the weight of the engine and transaxle being positioned so far forward in the vehicle. This handling characteristic also offers safer handling - if the car starts to push in the middle of a corner (the nose drives towards the outside of the turn), reducing speed tends to allow the car to steer through the car. On the other hand, adding only a larger rear bar may reduce some of the understeer, but in some case it might produce oversteer. Having people spin off into the bushes while entering the freeway is something that the OEM's (and the aftermarket) would rather avoid. The weight of the bars do not factor into the handling performance. (On a racing vehicle where weight reduction is desirable, this may be more of a factor.)
Mazda has buried the mounting brackets of the Mazda 3 and 6 DEEP inside the car, access is very limited. I do not have any word on [rear] links for this application.
Jim Mederer, Racing Beat's co-founder and chief engineer for review:
The "3" bars were developed to work together, and I would not recommend using one without the other. The adjustability of the bars was based on our analysis of the load and angularity issues of each bar. We prefer adjustability in a bar if it is practical.
Jim Mederer
