sways or strut bars or both

so im running sti pinks, and koni struts and shocks on my 05 lgt. i want my car to handle a little better with snow coming (fun) and i want else body roll... i know what strut bars do... would it be neccessary to run both?? ive researched and sway bars come up as 22mm and 25mm. which 1 would i need. any brand you prefer better then the other?

I have heard strut bars are just throwing your money away for a dd. And I also heard larger sways make the car worse in the snow. Uneven surfaces=less traction. Im running bilsteins/pinks, and I have been wanting to do sways, but I do a decent mount of snow

you probably want some body roll for the winter.. I normally disconnect my sways in the winter to give it some ease to cut through the snow allow to have some play as it's easier to drive at the limit.

 

Strut bars are next to worthless unless it's welded onto this car as a half-cage. I already have the STi front strut bar, and yet through all my track driving, I still managed to twist my entire chassis.. the front right is actually sitting higher than the left strut tower. I will need to find time to get the chassis pulled and put in a full cage in my car when that time comes.. with a full cage and some key areas to do some seam welding, my car can easily increase in rigidity by as much as 75% (WRC rally cars are 250% stiffer than it's production counter-part).. this will eliminate for me to not bother with strut bars or any other kind of non-moving or supplementary support bars and I can focus on getting the primary suspension components to work independently.

 

just remember, the larger your sway bars are, the more you are taking out the independent suspension of the car.. some WRC cars dont even have sway bars at all, but they rely on pure independent suspension to provide the anti-rolling abilities. If you get better shocks and springs (preferable to get coilovers) the less you need the sway bars to complement them.

 

If you want to run better in teh snow, run a softer setup and get dedicated winter tires, that alone will give your car a vast improvement.

 

And as for sway bars, it depends on your driving style, the larger the bar, the stiffer it usually is.. there's some technical differences if it's solid bar or hallow bar based on weight savings vs volumetric structural strength (a solid 22mm bar can have the same stiffness as a 24mm hollow bar but it really depends on it's inner and outer diameter of the hollow bar).

 

In the dry, a larger front bar will give a higher limit of turn-in response and it will keep it flat.. while a larger rear bar will make the car stay more stable going into the turn. Most people (and I'm going from my experiencing teaching people high performance driving) that the car is usually overdriven of it's limit of the sway bars. Typically people who put larger front sways will have this tendency to understeer and plow more because they load up the outside front tire and end up picking up the inner front tire off the ground, rendering the new front sway bar ineffective because there's no reactive force coming from the inside wheel. As for the rear, the car is over driven and the car tends to drift more and the rear end slides out just as the front because the outside tire reached maximum g-forces and starts to pick up the inside tire with the new stiffer sway bar. But the real key is front to rear balance of grip.. if you are like me and dont mind to allow the rear to break traction, you can stiffen the rear on purpose to break traction.. stiffer in this case to to have less give or room for error when driving at the limit of the tires. You are physically limiting the range of motion of the suspension to be less compliant and matched with the roads oscillations and demands.

 

See my car in an autocross as I am coming into the corner in the rain. The 2.5RS I run has the upgraded front sway while I kept the front sway stock to allow the car to not understeer as i come into this corner.. if I had upgraded the front sway (whiteline hollow is probably the only option I had on this car) I would have not made that turn in pure NON-TIRE-SCREECHING manner:

 

http://img106.imageshack.us/img106/6105/kelly2eo4.jpg

 

Here is the car in the dry:

http://img246.imageshack.us/img246/2175/keefe1ep5.jpg

 

This is what happens to the car as you overdrive the tires.. the car is flat and not rolling over, but the tires can't handle the amount of forces you are asking it to do, hence the tires end up breaking traction and end up sliding.. in my case, I'm actually drifting this car:

 

http://img158.imageshack.us/img158/1556/keefe2ut2qz6.jpg

 

Here's my GT with upgraded larger front and rear sways, but I opted to set the rear to be stiffer than the front compared to OEM stiffness because I want the car to be able to break the traction limit sooner than the front to get the car to rotate, more on my thread here:

http://legacygt.com/forums/showthread.php?t=3611&highlight=vacanza

http://legacygt.com/forums/showthread.php?t=49672&highlight=vacanza

 

http://img50.imageshack.us/img50/225/07winterseries20044gs5.jpg

So, in the winter, you're saying it's beneficial to, say, have stock sways on for better traction as opposed to upgraded sways?

 

I ask because I put in an order for some Whitelines, and I'm wondering if I should wait until spring to install them now lol.

you can install them, I just disconnect my endlinks off of them.. the issue is that you can drive the car smoother and easier when it has some give in the snow.. similar to hydroplaning.. if you slap a hard surface onto the water or snow, you are just going to matte the snow down and glide over it.. think of it like water skiing or surfing where you just glide over the water.. if you run narrower tires and create a situation where you cut into the water buy softening it's motion rather than slapping onto the water (aka surface water tension) then it'll be safer and easier to drive.

I have a quick question....I was toying with the idea of getting strut bars on the front and rear for my 05 Legacy GT. How involved is it to install the rear one? I know on the Impreza's, you have to remove the rear seat. Is this true on the Legacy?

It's very easy to install the rear, since the top of the struts is abour the same level as the spare cover.

All I had to do with both my cars was knotch the spare cover and the bar runs right on top of the cover when replaced.

 

 

 

No interference with space like there is with the older Imprezas.

 

Cheers!

R

You have the wagon....but I have the sedan. Is there any difference?

I have both,but this is the only pic I have. Easier install on the sedan. Much easier to trim the cover.

I have found that the Legacy is pretty damn firm in stock mode, I am not going to add anything to the chassy.