Yesturday I went to Helix and had the H-sport springs installed. Eric didnt have the RDR's in stock , so Im going to wait for them. Just wanted to see if H-Sport comp would be a better choice? Anyone experienced both of them? I only do street driving.

GMed

 

Go for the comp! You won't be disappointed. I have the H-Sport comp bar, but have no experience any other bars. However, Randy Webb convinced me that a comp bar was appropriate for the street, when I was bar shopping. I am not a track trained driver, but I love this bar! I don't think it will give you any trouble. Start at the softest setting to get a feel for the bar. It does take a little getting used to if you don't have previous familiarity with sway bars. Most drivers seem to settle on the middle setting for street driving. I've left my bar on the soft setting because my wife drives the car alot. At that setting with otherwise stock suspension there is no appreciable sacrifice in ride quality. Get the comp - you'll love it!

 

H-sport comp for street driving=bad idea . A 25mm rear sway bar will make your MINI oversteer like crazy unless your planted on the throttle. When your turning and have to let up on the throttle or apply the brakes, your rear end will not be in the rear for very long. Get their 19mm "sport" bar which will be more suitable for street driving. Even the 19mm will induce oversteer pretty easily when on it's stiffest setting.

 

Which bar is OK depends on your driving style and need for hard cornering. For autocross or track the H-sport is probably more useful. For street driving the RDR will work fine (try soft to medium setting first). The H-sport comp bar is 25mm and oversized (thin wall and lighter weight) but has the effective strength of a 22mm bar. Consider the cost, the weight, and the appearance.

The H-sport comp bar with softest setting probably would work for street driving. I don't think that the firm and firmest settings would be as useful. WIth the RDR bar you can use the soft and middle settings without much trouble.

 

i have the h-sport comp. 25.5 mm. on my coopers i have been driving around town and i think it is just fine no problems with under steering, i love the way car drives through the turns....i do have it set on soft. ....

good luck..

 

This is grossly overstated to the point of being completely misleading!

A) the Comp bar is adjustable to match the car and the driver
B) did I mention it's ADJUSTABLE?
C) In general, my car still understeers with my H-Sport Comp rear bar on FULL STIFF
D) H-Sport's "19mm" rear bar is actually 17mm effective, since the bar is hollow Chrome-moly and cannot be directly compared to solid spring steel like most swaybars
E) H-Sport's "25mm" rear bar is actually 22mm effective, for the same reason as D)

--->gmed: The H-Sport bar, because it's hollow cro-mo, is about half the weight of equivalent stiffness spring-steel. Based on that, plus the adjustability (and the excellent production tolerances (read: the bars are flat) you simply can't go wrong)

I hope that straightens things out,
Ryan

 

Have you seen R-Speeds new chrome-moly forged 22 mm solid bar? 3 position adjustable also.

 

agreed ryan

i have the h-sport comp bar on middle for about a couple of weeks now without any significant difference when turning at 'city' speed, only when you do faster corners and suddenly lift would you get the claimed 'oversteer' and can easily corrected

it also depends on cooper or an S, consider a stock S rear bar would also aid a cooper greatly while being EXTREMELY friendly to the pocket

i'd do the rdr simply cuze it's solid bar, even if the h-sport comes with urethane bushings

 

I just installed the H-Sport Tubular today along with H-sport springs. Not down off the jacks yet as I need to finish up the exhaust. I set the bar in the middle setting, is this what you all with this bar would recommend?

 

setting up a car with the rear H-Sport Comp bar only [my conservative recommendations...better safe than sorry]:

Cooper and S - start on rearward, or "softest" setting until you re-learn the vehicle limits!

An S with the Comp rear-only in the middle setting is about perfect for completely neutral handling. You seriously need to re-learn how to drive your car [at the limit] if you're only used to stock.

 

Sorry for jumping the gun guys . I just wanted to let him know about the possibilites if he overdoes it and creates an oversteering MINI. Concerning the 19mm vs 25mm H-sport, what's the stiffness settings feel like between the two bars? Is the stiffest setting on the 19mm like the loosest on the 25? Does the loosest setting on the 25mm create a neutral feel and the middle and stiff settings induce oversteer? Can the 19mm also force oversteer (how much more stiff is it really from stock)?

 

--->Kapps, It all depends on the vehicle setup. You can change the geometry of the car, use the stock rear bar and make the car oversteer! But back in 'stock geometry' land, with an MCS, the Comp bar in the middle setting is about as neutral as it gets. By this, it will understeer on-throttle and not-quite-oversteer (aka drift) off-throttle. The H-Sport Street bar is essentially a stock bar with a "stiffer" hole option; it's basically worthless! If you only want to dial out some of the understeer, then get an ALTA 19mm bar.

Sidebar: I have H-Sport Comp bars front and back. I run the front bar on soft and the rear bar on full-stiff; this gives excellent mid and high-speed balance and stability, but sucks for autocross due to the stiff front bar. No problem, as I prefer my car setup for Track and Dragon.

 

I owned both and my gut feel is that full stiff on the RDR is comparable to the middle setting on the H-Sport. (Take this with a grain of salt--the two bars weren't driven back-to-back.)

RDR full stiff will come around if provoked. I drove it on the dragon on full stiff without any time to acclimate. (I didn't have time to readjust it before the trip, and the entire trip up there it rained so I really didn't have a moment to test the limits.) RDR will start to drift even on the mid-setting and this is a great street setting for unfamiliar roads.

The H-Sport of course drifts on the middle setting, and to me it's completely predictable, easy-to-manage slide.

If I were going back up to the dragon I'd run the RDR middle or h-sport soft just to leave a margin of safety. To me it's a lot more fun being able to push the car in an environ like that without fear of looping it. You can do it on a stiffer setting, and it's fun, but you'd better know your limits. ;-)

As far as fit/finish the nod goes to the h-sport. I like the grease-fittings on the bushings, and that the bend schedule keeps the bar centered without the use of the collars that the RDR uses.

Hope this helps,

Jeff

 

So if I understand this correctly, you're first describing what the rear bar does for the car's balance to a person who has a stock front sway, but then you go on to say that you have an H-Sport front sway, which would serve to reduce oversteer. Did you ever have JUST the Competition sway installed? That's more the information I've been looking for. I don't want to get the Competition sway on the softest setting and find out the hard way what happens when there's a road hazard on an on-ramp on a rainy day.

 

Here's my experience, as a progression, 2003 MSC, dry track environment.

1. Started with stock springs, stock front sway bar, H-Sport comp rear bar at softest setting. Very nice, still some under steer with agressive driving, fine for street.

2. H-sport comp, H&R springs, Koni shocks, Kumho MX tires 215/40 x 17, Kosei K1 wheels, -1.5 degree rear camber. Gets even better. Rear bar at middle setting. Very balanced, very firm but not harsh. Streetable if you don't mind the stiff ride (I don't.) A tiny bit of under steer, enough to keep you out of trouble.

3. Added H-sport front sway bar, soft setting. Re-introduces a bit of under steer, makes car extremely stiff (rear wheel will lift off ground entering driveways at an angle ). However, on the track, begin turn in and let off throttle and the car turns very nicely with no surprises.

4. Still to try: set rear bar to full stiff, and then a track day. I expect a bit faster turn in on throttle lift off, surprises to come? Guess we'll see.

Wonder how this thing will work in the wet... hope it won't kill me. :smile:

 

Exactly what I wanted to hear, monkey! Everybody seems to toss tons of parts at their car right off the bat, so they never quite know what the sway bar alone did. My progression is as follows:

1. Stock springs, stock sways, added an H-Sport Front Camber Plate w/ -1.5 degrees camber for the front, 205/45-17 Dunlop SP Sport 9000 (non-runflat) tires. Understeer reduced substantially, steering feel changed a bit with a little bit of additional torque steer.
2. TEIN High.Tech springs, stock sways, H-Sport Front Camber Plate set to -1.75 degrees camber for the front, 205/40-17 Kumho Ecsta MX tires. Increased the cornering limit noticeably, but introduced a larger tendency to understeer at the limit, most likely due to increased rear negative camber.

So now I'm pondering which sway bar to get. I'd really like to get the rear camber back to factory settings to see how much that affected my understeering, but if I get the lower control arms, I won't have money for the sway bar for awhile. In other words, a sway bar will offer me much more bang for the buck at the moment.

I'll be swinging by Ireland Engineering this evening to take a look at their 22mm hollow infinitely adjustable rear sway. It seems like a really great idea, but I think 22mm hollow may be too soft for my needs, if the wall thickness is comparable to what H-sport uses (which would place it at a 19mm solid equivalent).

 

iDiaz,

Yeah, that will be interesting to know what a sway bar tossed into the mix will do. I'm pretty happy with how the car works now. However, the next change will be to get the car to stick even better in the corners.

The front camber is within stock settings after the H&R springs ( I need to review the report from the guys that made the measurements), the rear is -1.5. Will my best bet be to install camber plates in the front? Or go with really sticky tires? Or both! LOL. The car turns great and it's super easy to control with the throttle when the car is completely loose, like in turn 2 a Thill. I'd like to increase how the car plain sticks, so I can gain some corner speed and really make the Corvettes green with envy.

This is the first car I've done these sorts of changes to... I'm a track bike guy and we don't have to mess with camber settings - makes things a lot easier.

 

Ooh, I'd most definitely go with some camber plates. Your front grip will increase so much, you'll probably want to dial back that rear sway to tame some oversteer. I'm running -1.75 degrees in the front, and it's pretty incredible. The limit increased most substantially, but the car still tends to understeer at the limit, which is why I'm looking for a sway bar to try to balance it more towards four-wheel-drift. With regards to camber, a lot of people at the track go as far as -3.0 degrees on the front, -2.0 degrees in the rear, so that tells you how important camber is to ultimate grip. Naturally, these aren't settings you'd want to be using on the street everyday due to tire wear.

Sticky tires are always good, too--but with how many tires I go through, I can't afford to go to anything lower than my current 220 treadwear rating.

Oh, btw... I'm running OZ Superleggeras (17x7 ET37mm 15.5 lbs). What a huge difference lightweight wheels made!

 

Before you decide on a swaybar, take a look at the new R-speed bar. I talked to Joseph on the phone today, and they have a top notch product that they are very excited about. I ordered one after talking with him, and will review it when it arrives and I get it installed.

 

The new Rspeed rear sway bar (only in black) is attractively priced and a quality product.
Randy Webb at Webbmotorsports is going to get one for testing soon and will also write something up. So far it looks like for a basic excellent bar at good price the Rspeed is worth a look, if you need lightness and don't mind having a stiff bar with slightly higher cost then the H-sport comp is worth a look.

 

I got my hands on an Ireland Engineering 22mm Infinitely Adjustable Hollow Sway Bar (whew!) yesterday for review, so look for an article on it on http://www.teammightyminiz.com in the very near future. :smile:

 

I always prefer and recommend a balanced sway-bar combo for the MINI for Track and Dragon driving; the firmer front bar will, as Monkey_Boy found, improve high-speed stability and predictability at the expense of reduced oversteer, which is of course adjusted with the swaybar adjustments.

 

Cool, I'll look into camber plates this winter.

Speaking of four wheel drift, that is exactly how my car works now. It does nothing weird, does not want to rotate, it doesn't push the front (well, maybe just a tiny bit and when it does it, I just ease of the throttle a tad and bam! it turns!), it just gets loose and easy to control. It's so balanced it makes me feel like I actually know how to drive a car! LOL

 

I thought I knew what sway bar to get, not. I was giving the R Speed forged 22 mm bar a hard look. After reading all this advice and reviews what a hard choice it has become. OK, the car, 2004 MCS factory sports suspension plus, JCW (210 HP) version added after I put about 8000 on the odometer. What a rocket this car became, love it. This car is a daily driver, I do every now and then push it (when safe) hard into corners.:smile: I do get the DSC light to flicker, I know I can turn it off at will and will as conditions allow. As time goes on I will be pushing this car harder and harder, ( don't jump in the water without knowing how deep it is). Have some experience with SCCA Jim Conner racing with my old 68 Datsun PL510 (rear wheel drive). What I like is a car that is neutral not on or off the throttle. Steering is done with the throttle. I've seen a lot of reviews on this web site about the H sport street bar and the H sport comp bar. If I understand are these two different bars? I don't know how much weight is a factor is, but not concerned about stiff ride. Know stiff ride is only on uneven road surfaces, straight line is not a factor. Sorry about being long winded about this, but I do like to get it right the first time, after all I am an aircraft mechanic and we MUST GET IT RIGHT THE FIRST TIME. Peoples lives depend on us. Any advice you can provide would be much appreciated. Thank you JAMER:smile:

 

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