You’re running alot higher spring rates than i am in the rear, the H&R coilovers i have are 385 lb/in front, 365 lb/in rear!!! or somewhere around there, so i think i would benefit from a little rear bar on these coilovers, to kind of compensate for the vaginal spring rates, in the rear at least
In a perfect world, sway bars are just about fine tuning suspension balance after you’ve picked the perfect spring rates. For street cars it rarely works that nicely but the sway bars are still about front to rear balance, not total spring rate (the bar is just a big spring that you can change the rate of). Try them out, but I’m betting you’ll want lots of front bar and little rear bar, maybe even stock. By general suspension knowledge that sounds like crazy understeer but since the Ackerman angle of steering on the E36 is so stupid high (and when you turn the wheel, notice how the front of the car will actually raise?) the front benefits from a big ass front bar set to full stiff. People dont believe it when they start suspension tuning these cars until they try it.
I’ve heard the same thing from multiple people, so I might as well give it a shot…know anywhere i can buy JUST a front bar?
:lurker
I feel so left out. Maybe I should go buy an E36 :ninja
My inner tie-rod is loose, and it’s a PITA to deal with it.
Benny who’s doing all the work?
You can buy just the front for both H&R and Eibach. I bought my H&Rs from Turner.
:nod same with audis, i swear theres like a minimal payment u have to drop to just walk in and say hi, a hello starts at 5 bills. im like :runaway
yours truly, well actually i have a friend out in charlton that i do most of the work with, he too has an e36 m3 and we test stuff on each others cars to see if we want to buy it…im going to be testing pads here for spring :rofl
Got everything ordered, somehow ended up spending just shy of $750 :idiots
must be shipping? lol
now we wait
I DEMAND pics of everything when it comes in :lol
That should be one hell of a pile of stuff.
As the saying goes “pics or ban” :nod
eh the only big thing is the x-brace, everything else is just little nonsense, no money for really fun stuff…
BUT as a whole all of these things should make for a very tight car this season, only things bugging me now is when i go in to take the driveshaft off/inspect the rear subframe/diff mount bushings/diff bolt will i have to do more replacing/restoration RIGHT NOW? grr
Well at least you’re not cutting corners anywhere.
99% of people would rather spend money on mods then maintanance. Especially as extensive as this.
thanks for the insight on the bars jesse. i can totally see where you are coming from on that. maybe i will just buy a front bar. it’ll save me some money at least. the swaybarbarians are only $350.00 for the pair w/ the urethane endlinks though. i am on a semi-soft street suspension though, so maybe both sways will help me out more than you guys with coilovers. right now i’m on the eibach sport-system with is eibach shocks and sportline springs. the ride is very comfortable, but to eliminate almost all the roll would be awesome. maybe i will just grab the front eibach bar. hmmm… i guess time will tell.
benny, i wouldn’t stress when you look at the subframe, cuz mine isn’t torn or bad at all. i can’t vouch for the condition of your subframe mounting points, but it seems like only some e36 have this issue. mine has almost 180k on it and its fine. we both know its been driven hard as well. i will be installing the reinforcement plates regardless as an insurance item. since i’m doing lca’s, rtab’s, rsm’s, diff mounts, subframe mounts, etc… i’m just going to drop the whole rear cradle out of the car. might as well attack it all at once.
Well it doesn’t help that every time i talk to jclark he tells me to ‘maintain my shit’ :rofl
truth be told i love maintenance, if there’s one car guy’s dream it’s to have his favorite car that he is the most passionate about be showroom brand new, clean as a whistle, less than 10 miles, etc…and you get a little taste of that for everything you replace :banana
^^ i actually don’t mind maintenance either. i remember looking at all the pics i took at joe cookie’s place with my car on the pit. i was looking underneath and admiring all my mods/ how clean the underside of my car was. i even remember cleaning it up a little while on the pit. :tong
I spend most of last fall helping a buddy repair his E36’s major rear subframe mount failure, it was nasty.
Pete- You went to Joe’s that day? I’ve known him for years! My car was probably being stored there at the time.
You may want both front and rear bars, a lot of people do. I dont think you’ll need the rear bar more for street suspension than a track suspension since its just balance but it cant hurt to play around with it. I like to crank the wheel into a corner and get on the gas early, so the soft rear bar fit my style. If you dont want to spend a lot, just get the front bar to start. It’ll still be a huge improvement in turn-in.
People have mixed reviews on the Sway Barbarians from UUC. It’s just hearsay from the BF.c track forum but might be worth a search. shrug
your car definitely wasnt there, we would have caught that and been drooling all over it…this was like 2 years ago
It spend a good part of that year in there in several hundred pieces. Did a trans swap, subframe, suspension, and some other big jobs. Fun times.
yeah, joe is good people, and this was a few years a go as benny said. the only car that was there iirc was a white mk3 golf. benny and i would have been salivating over your car indeed i’m sure.
well, tax time is coming up, and swaybar(s) are on my to buy list, so i guess when the time comes i’ll pull the trigger. the uuc bars just seem like such a good deal. especially compared to how much other tuners sell them for.
jesse, do you think there would be harm if i bought the swaybarbarians to leave the rear on and set it to “full soft?” what kinds of criticisms did they have in the track forums? thanks. i just want to make sure i’m going to be happy with my suspension entirely.
Theres no harm in leaving the rear on full soft. In the case of the rear H&R bar, even at full soft, it was still slightly stiffer than OEM. So since I wanted softer, the next step was to go back to the stock bar. The difference is VERY small, you wont notice it on the street.
I dont remember any of the criticisms exactly but I think they had something to do with the balance not being great. I haven’t researched them since I bought bars 2 years ago. I remember someone arguing with Rob Levinson about how his numbers were wrong on his big UUC spreadsheet for the Swaybarbarians. Sorry that doesnt help much.
oh no jesse, it does help. you actually have tracked your car, while i haven’t had the please of doing so with mine yet, but hopefully when its tuned right, and i have the funds i will do the same at least a few times.
i really appreciate your input on this man. i’ll go on bf.c in a bit and do a search and see what i come up with. i am going to take everything on there with a grain of salt though, the forums can be quite misleading sometimes. i’ll let you know what i come up with.