bigBADbenny wrote:And also Jezzas h6… as timed on track.
Whilst I appreciate the confidence I hesitate to call my track experiences empirical data- but I do agree anyway
While its probably more applicable than John Doe 'thrashing' it through some abandoned back street, I have only done 5 track days and definitely would not call myself a racing driver. After starting off not particularly fast, I have consistently dropped 1-2 seconds per track day, as a combination of skill level increases and modifications done to the car. There has, however, been one track day that does not fit this trend, and that was the one I did with the whiteline 20mm rear sway bar. That track day was a 28c day, sunny and there had been no rain in the few days before- basically optimum. My issue with this as a data point is that sway bar was only on the car for that one track day- I removed it not long after as I wasn't happy with it. Therefore, for all I know, maybe something else was to blame there. Who knows. Maybe an off day/I was tired. Maybe different alignment specs. Oil on the track that no one else had issues with. Who knows. That was track day #4, where my best time was 0.92 seconds slower than the track day before.
I chose to install the rear sway bar on the advice of people on the facebook page, who claimed it made a positive difference even with the Shockworks. Day-to-day driving definitely 'felt' faster- there was definitely less body roll that even led to passengers stating the car felt 'more sporty'. The first time I 'actually' tried to drive with it though was an eye opening experience, to say the least. On a twisty road I am very intimately familiar with the very first thing I noticed was how much less grip the rear end had. Not that it had 'transferred' or 'unlocked' any grip to the front, though, but cornering at speeds the previous setup would have done comfortably saw the back end step out. It wasn't like the current setup is either, with DCCD and front LSD meaning cornering is basically turn in and control back end with the throttle and cornering speed, but unpredictable, with snap oversteer occurring after even mild understeer. It was hard to predict and even harder to control, and lead to more than one brown pants moment. The limit was both much harder to find, and it was almost impossible to hold it at the limit without the car snapping around. This lead me to the conclusion that less body roll does not equal better cornering. Maybe more confidence inspiring, but on these heavier cars, after a point, there is very diminishing returns.
I ended up getting a custom made solid 18mm arb for the rear end of my car, and I am still running the stock H6 21mm front sway bar. 18mm was decided in conjunction with another member, based upon both our mutual hatred of the handling characteristics of the 20mm rear arb, and comparisons between my stock 16mm hollow rear arb and his hollow 18(?)mm rear arb. 18mm solid was a bit of a guess, but we extrapolated based upon testing with the 3 different rear arb's we had access to. I am quite happy with the performance of the custom bar, being 3 way adjustable I keep it in the softest setting most of the time, and this set up is much nicer to drive both on and off track. This setup is slightly stiffer at the back compared to the stock one on his tbSTi, which I believe is 18mm hollow, and is definitely stiffer than the stock 3.0r-b rear bar, but it is much more predictable compared to the whiteline rear arb.
There have been no brown pants moments on road's I am familiar with, and a continuation of lap times decreasing. With the same (basically) setup I was about 2 seconds faster at Winton between the whiteline and the custom rear sway bar. The car is a lot more predicable at the limit, and it is easy to hold it at the limit without worrying about the back end snapping out on track. If I ever feel the need to play around with the front arb I am pleased to know I can stiffen up the rear to match but I don't see the need to do that anyway.
However, I am not against people fitting the whiteline (or other) bar if they feel like it improves their car. Just because I feel like it made my car slower, some people may prefer the stiffer corning feel. If you were running crap tyres, or maxspeedingrods or…(you get my point
)… the loss in overall performance may be overshadowed by the confidence increase offered by a flatter corning profile to a less experienced driver. Some people may be chasing the more oversteer-y driving profile, and I am sure that with further playing around with alignments and front arb's it could be made to be more predictable. I'm still not convinced it would be faster, however.
What I don't like is people is people spouting off the 'magical' nature of a rear antiroll bar. 'Just like coilovers', 'poor man's coilovers', handle's on rails' etc were all things I read that made me spend (waste) whatever it was that I spent on the whiteline bar. Without lots of time spent perfecting other parts of your car, especially alignments and spring rates, they flat out won't make you car empirically faster. Feels faster, and actually is faster, are two different things, and this is the thing I am most happy I learnt from this experience. People trying to justify the money they spent on the arb is probably another reason so many people rave about them- I wouldn't be surprised- its not nice to feel like you have wasted your money on something.