Say without assuming I need a specific piece of equipment to solve a problem here is the problem I am having, let me know how to solve it.

I enjoy taking turns rather fast, braking or downshifting late and powering out the back side of the turn. However I have noticed that upon powering out the front end of the car seems to literally lift off the ground lossing traction and therefore not getting the power I want to accelerate through the entire turn. I have the stock Cooper S suspension that came with the car including original brakes, fitted EBC Green's.

Perhaps my impression of what is happening is inaccurate but the car does literally feel like it's trying to launch itself. Any suggestions on how to keep it planted to road better would be appreciated. Thanks

 

Based upon your sig, the stock rear sway bar is still in place. An upgrade should make a profound difference .

 

Just the rear replacing the stock rear sway bar you say TonyB? With something like Alta's 22mm?

 

It will make a huge difference.......that is the place to start

 

In my opinion, the 25.5mm (hollow) H-Sport is better, and weighs half as much as the Alta 22.

 

Trade in the JCW S for a Cooper.

Others know more about these things than I do, but I don't think a rear swaybar change will help get the power down coming out of a turn. I'd think your choices would be:

less power / less throttle
stickier tires
LSD

and perhaps stiffer springs / dampers so less weight transfers fore-aft during braking and acceleration, but I don't think there would be that much to be gained from that.

 

I would also have to say that a rear sway bar will help. I just put on an Alta 22mm sway bar and it is amazing the difference in handling through corners, The car stays much more neutral i.e doesn't lean to the outside when turning. This neutrality will keep your tires more firmly planted which allows you to accelerate harder out of a turn. I have been most impressed with the difference in the handling of the car, but I have to wait for the 2 day auto-x this weekend to give it a real test

 

Thanks everyone for the feedback on the rear sway bar. That's what I will do than, unfortunately I cannot get the Alta bar here in the UK but will look for the H-Sport perhaps they are willing to ship it over, Alta wasn't.

Or perhaps John Cooper Worls has a rear sway bar, they must I could just drive down there and pick it up. ANyone want to join me?

 

Alta has a ditributor in the UK and they advertise in GOMINI

 

That's great news SpiderX I will cehck them out. I wonder why Alta didn't tell me that in the first palce when i called them directly. Go figure

 

I suspect the sway bar will help some by trying to keep the front level, but you will still be fighting for traction as the front lifts during acceleration. So a LSD will help transfer power to the wheel with the most traction to power you out of the turn...

 

Thanks Mikem53 but the LSD is not something I want to go with so it will have to be with other components.

 

Since we're talking about a rear swaybar, won't that actually cause the front of the car to become less level during cornering?

Big rear swaybar / small front swaybar: takes a lot of weight off the inside rear wheel, raising it in the air if you turn hard enough. The weight that was on the inside rear gets moved mainly to the outside front... great for getting into the corner. Soft (relatively) front swaybar means that it doesn't even out the weight between the front wheels. Slam on the gas coming out of the turn and the inside front wheel loses traction. No LSD, so it gets more power and spins it's brains out.

But, I seem to be the only one thinking that a bigger rear swaybar will not help get power down coming out of a turn, so I might still be wrong.

[edited to add]

I'm not saying big rear swaybars are bad, or that it won't make you faster through a corner. You should be able to carry more speed through the corner with a neutral handling car, and a bigger rear swaybar is a cheap way to get closer to neutral handling.

I am saying that if the problem is getting the power to the road coming out of a corner, I don't think a bigger rear swaybar will make that much of a difference.

 

From my experiences, and others that I know, going with a stiffer rate rear sway bar helped flaten-out the front, thus getting less wheel spin. As far as exiting a corner, I also felt it there as well. An since we are talking corners, negative camber would certainly help here also so as to make sure more that more of the tire is square to the pavement under such conditions...

 

velVetT your description actually matches exactly what Alta's description says the rear sway bar would do so now I am not sure what I should do. Furhtermore I just checked out what the Alta rear sway bar costs over here in the UK and guess what, its $300.00 USD It's not anywhere's near that in the USA is it? This really sucks! So now I am not sure I will be doing anything to the suspension. How in the world do these Brits manage to live over here when everything is so rediculously expensive

 

Velvet... the rear sway bar will help keep the whole car level during a turn. It works nicely on the mini as it is small and rigid. It wont be able to help tractionh when accelerating as the weight shifts to the rear and the front wheels unload. Thats why I suggested the LSD to help the wheel with the most traction...

 

If a simple rear sway costs $300.00 bucks over here can you imagine what an LSD set up would cost

 

This weight transfer off the front wheels towards the rear is an unchangeable result of acceleration, and you are describing an inherent limitation of FWD. FWD cars simply cannot power out of turns like in RWD where weight is transferred to the driven wheels. The best solution is to wait until the car is mostly straight before rolling on the throttle. I know it's less fun, but to do otherwise would overheat the front tires--then they lose grip and you go slower.

That said, without LSD you are limited by the traction available to the inside tire. It would theoretically be advantageous to reduce the front antiroll bar to the base MC size or eliminate it entirely, and then replace the lost front spring rate with higher rate coilover springs. The front antiroll bar works to pick up the inside tire when the outside tire is pushed up by cornering, whereas a stiff spring would always push down.

 

I've heard great things about adding a rear sway bar (Randy Webb recommended it as my next upgrade when I got my pulley installed) and am seriously considering adding it soon.

Question for those in snowy climates - how does the upgraded sway bar affect traction in snow/ice? I would think the car would be more likely to oversteer in adverse traction conditions.

Thoughts?

Thanks,
Michael

 

That sounds interesting BFG9000 so you are saying iliminate the stock front sway bar and put heftier springs and shocks on the front, yes?

 

In the snow, if you are driving sanely, a stiffer swaybar has darn close to zero effect. The swaybar works by "coupling" the springs, so when you compress one, it also has to compress the other spring a little bit. When cornering in the snow, you most likely will not be compressing the springs much anyway, because you aren't turning that hard.

I had the same concern when I was thinking about getting a larger rear swaybar. I had no problems at all through the Vermont winter.

And, here's a picture of my Cooper during an autocross. My "mongrel" suspension consists of JCW springs / dampers, sports suspension front swaybar (not SS+) and RDR rear swaybar on the softest setting. Yes, this is a combination that you should not be able to get, at least not easily. Sorry for the image quality, it's a capture from a low-quality video. That is daylight between the right rear wheel and the parking lot.

 

MGear,
Yes, but for a different reason than those AutoX people who do the same thing. There, changing the rear bar is not allowed under class rules so they reduce the size of the front bar to adjust handling balance. Here, you are trying to minimize unloading of the inside front wheel so you can apply more power through it.

velVeT, Michael,
Yep, snow reduces the capabilities of a Porsche to less than a rusty Vega. The most important thing in snow is having the right tires. I can't count the number of times I've seen wrecked or stuck AWD Audis, etc with fat tires in snow. Even being "all season" tires doesn't help when they are 10" wide...

 

I was a bit off in my description of cornering with a big rear bar and small front bar. The big rear bar will take weight off the inside rear wheel and send a large amount of that weight to the inside front wheel, which aids in cornering. But, I mistakenly said the added weight on the inside front would pull weight away from the outside front, causing more wheelspin under throttle. A small front bar would only take a small amount of weight off the inside front wheel.

I think I understand what a rear swaybar does. I almost understand what a front swaybar does. I'm getting lost in what happens when you think about both bars at the same time.

In any case, when dealing with ~200hp on a front wheel drive car, there will be problems getting the power down coming out of a corner. That's why I only have 115hp. and I still get wheelspin.

 

Front drives can't accelerate out of the corner like rear wheel drives.

Try to find a balance ( and a speed) that puts more weight on the front in a corner (decelerate) - maybe go in a little faster

 

Okay I sucked it up and placed an order for the Alta 22mm Rear Sway Bar. After reading all the feedback in this thread, which I greatly appreciate, and knowing what else I will be doing to the car over the next 6 months adding the rear sway bar makes sense although the $300.00 proce tag doesn't make any sense .