Sway bar worth it?
Sway bar worth it?
I was looking in the LMC Truck catalog and came across sway bars for the front and rear. My truck does not have one and I was thinking if they are worth it for a F150 4x4?
Worth what? Their value depends ENTIRELY on what you do with the truck. Most people who off-road hate them. Most people who tow/haul can't live without them. If you want tighter handling, you definitely need them.
Sway bars have no noticable affect on ride quality. They do reduce body lean and tend to make handling more predictable. Do NOT add a rear bar without adding a front; the resulting handling has a dangerous amount of oversteer. You can add just the front but you will probably not like that result either; it will make your truck understeer even more than it already does. The best combination is either both bars or no bars. I have both on my truck.
Be aware that if your truck did not come with factory bars you will need to replace the lower front spring perches in order to mount a front bar. The rear should be a straight bolt-on.
Be aware that if your truck did not come with factory bars you will need to replace the lower front spring perches in order to mount a front bar. The rear should be a straight bolt-on.
No difference in ride quality? I'm sure your intentions are good and your right about just adding a rear bar tending to increase oversteer (when not towing) you are wrong about not changing ride quality.
With any sway bar you are connecting the suspension together with a spring bar to the body. Anytime one wheel wants to do something the other wheel is not doing.. Up goes the spring rate.
Vince
With any sway bar you are connecting the suspension together with a spring bar to the body. Anytime one wheel wants to do something the other wheel is not doing.. Up goes the spring rate.
Vince
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I did not say "no difference" I said "no noticable affect." Words have precise meanings. Still the affect on ride quality from adding bars to most vehicles is rather minimal. Given the ride quality (or lack thereof) of an F150, the affect is not noticable.
This is the one I was looking at... for a F150 4x4... http://www.lmctruck.com/icatalog/fd/0095.html
StrangeRanger, thanks for the tip about the spring perch, I will look under the truck tomorrow.
For the most part the sway bars just improve handling for regular driving? In the event I have to be in 4x4 and off road, do they work against me?
StrangeRanger, thanks for the tip about the spring perch, I will look under the truck tomorrow.
For the most part the sway bars just improve handling for regular driving? In the event I have to be in 4x4 and off road, do they work against me?
They don't exactly "improve handling" - they do what their name implies. They reduce body lean (sway) in turns by reducing the weight on the inner wheels, causing the body to come back toward level. In certain circumstances, it helps handling; in others, it hurts.
Same for off-roading. Help-or-hurt depends on the specific situation, other specific characteristics of the truck, & your driving style. My truck is VERY heavy for its wheelbase, and I run F&R sway bars & open diffs, but my driving style generally allows me to keep going even when I lift a wheel (or 2).
Same for off-roading. Help-or-hurt depends on the specific situation, other specific characteristics of the truck, & your driving style. My truck is VERY heavy for its wheelbase, and I run F&R sway bars & open diffs, but my driving style generally allows me to keep going even when I lift a wheel (or 2).
FWIW, I posted this at www.fordsix.com in response to a question about the effect of sway bars on an F150's handling:
A vehicle with A-arm front suspensions starts off with a slight amount of negative camber (i.e. wheel pointing inwards at the top), strut suspensions start with a bit more. As you go into a corner and the outboard suspension compresses, the negative camber of the outer wheel with respect to the body increases (strut suspensions gain less than A-arm types therefore the greater initial setting.) At the same time the vehicle is rolling outwards with respect to the road which reduces the negative camber. If everything is set correctly, at the limit, the tire is exactly perpendicular to the road surface giving maximum contact patch.
Sway bars reduce body roll and transfer more weight to the outside tire which reduces its adhesion to the pavement. A front sway bar will cause a vehicle to understeer more, a rear will increase oversteer. By reducing body roll, sway bars allow less initial negative camber; this increases the contact patch in a straight line and shortens braking distances. A vehicle with very stiff sway bars may be slower at the limit than one with softer bars but it will probably be more predictable and much easier to drive at or near the limit because the bars tend to reduce the abruptness of the understeer/oversteer transition.
All this changes with an F150. The low angle swing axle front suspension (AKA Twin I-Beams) requires that you start off with zero camber. (The very last thing you ever want to experience with a front swing axle is the transition from negative camber to positive camber. It results in an instantaneous and ever-increasing loss of traction.) As the outboard suspension compresses in a corner, there is a very slight increase in negative camber with respect to the chassis. At the same time, the body is rolling outwards; when it does so it lifts the inboard end of the swing axle by an amount equal to the body roll which adds lots of positive camber. The harder you push this kind of a suspension system, the less traction you have in a corner as the contact patch gets progressively smaller and smaller. There is never the gain in contact patch with increases in cornering speed that you see with other suspensions.
When you add sway bars to this setup, they reduce body roll just like on normal suspensions, but rather than decreasing the rate at which you gain contact patch, they decrease the rate at which you lose it. They still transfer weight to the outside tire, so the loss of tractive force and increase in understeer is still present but it is offset somewhat by the fact that the tire is now retaining somewhat more contact patch. On an F150, the sway bars do not allow for a change in initial camber settings that would enhance braking; the initial setting is zero so straight line braking is already optimized.
The net effect is that sway bars will have more of an affect on F150s than on most other vehicles. BUT look at the vehicle that you're putting the sway bars onto. It features a high center of mass which in turn is located high above the high roll centers (the geometric point about which the suspension moves) which in turn are constantly changing with body roll This is a recipe for poor cornering. Ideally, you want the lowest possible center of mass and roll centers which are both lower than the swing axles allow and move as little as possible with respect to body roll and suspension movement.
Add to this the terrible weight distribution of any truck and the handling limit should not even be a consideration. You have a very heavy front end which starts with a massive amount of understeer and tends to lose traction as you push cornering speeds. This sounds like it should make for stable but somewhat slow cornering. It would except for what is going on in the rear.
In the rear you have extremely stiff suspension relative to the unladen weight. It compresses very, very little in cornering and transfers most of the weight to the outside tire with very little provocation. The addition of a rear sway bar only increases this tendency. When pushed to the limit, the rear suspension is likely to give up traction more suddenly and more totally than the front.
So when you drive it hard into a corner the front end begins to push more and more until it arrives at some sort of a steady state determined by body roll, contact patch and speed. At that point the vehicle will begin the understeer to oversteer transition which all RWD vehicles go through in a hard corner. The transition is sudden and can be violent. Once the oversteer begins, it may not stop. If you make the mistake of lifting off the throttle to try to regain control, the rear end can snap around almost instantly and no amount of counter steering is likely to save it.
The bottom line is: it's a truck. It's not meant to be cornered anywhere near it's limit.
Sway bars reduce body roll and transfer more weight to the outside tire which reduces its adhesion to the pavement. A front sway bar will cause a vehicle to understeer more, a rear will increase oversteer. By reducing body roll, sway bars allow less initial negative camber; this increases the contact patch in a straight line and shortens braking distances. A vehicle with very stiff sway bars may be slower at the limit than one with softer bars but it will probably be more predictable and much easier to drive at or near the limit because the bars tend to reduce the abruptness of the understeer/oversteer transition.
All this changes with an F150. The low angle swing axle front suspension (AKA Twin I-Beams) requires that you start off with zero camber. (The very last thing you ever want to experience with a front swing axle is the transition from negative camber to positive camber. It results in an instantaneous and ever-increasing loss of traction.) As the outboard suspension compresses in a corner, there is a very slight increase in negative camber with respect to the chassis. At the same time, the body is rolling outwards; when it does so it lifts the inboard end of the swing axle by an amount equal to the body roll which adds lots of positive camber. The harder you push this kind of a suspension system, the less traction you have in a corner as the contact patch gets progressively smaller and smaller. There is never the gain in contact patch with increases in cornering speed that you see with other suspensions.
When you add sway bars to this setup, they reduce body roll just like on normal suspensions, but rather than decreasing the rate at which you gain contact patch, they decrease the rate at which you lose it. They still transfer weight to the outside tire, so the loss of tractive force and increase in understeer is still present but it is offset somewhat by the fact that the tire is now retaining somewhat more contact patch. On an F150, the sway bars do not allow for a change in initial camber settings that would enhance braking; the initial setting is zero so straight line braking is already optimized.
The net effect is that sway bars will have more of an affect on F150s than on most other vehicles. BUT look at the vehicle that you're putting the sway bars onto. It features a high center of mass which in turn is located high above the high roll centers (the geometric point about which the suspension moves) which in turn are constantly changing with body roll This is a recipe for poor cornering. Ideally, you want the lowest possible center of mass and roll centers which are both lower than the swing axles allow and move as little as possible with respect to body roll and suspension movement.
Add to this the terrible weight distribution of any truck and the handling limit should not even be a consideration. You have a very heavy front end which starts with a massive amount of understeer and tends to lose traction as you push cornering speeds. This sounds like it should make for stable but somewhat slow cornering. It would except for what is going on in the rear.
In the rear you have extremely stiff suspension relative to the unladen weight. It compresses very, very little in cornering and transfers most of the weight to the outside tire with very little provocation. The addition of a rear sway bar only increases this tendency. When pushed to the limit, the rear suspension is likely to give up traction more suddenly and more totally than the front.
So when you drive it hard into a corner the front end begins to push more and more until it arrives at some sort of a steady state determined by body roll, contact patch and speed. At that point the vehicle will begin the understeer to oversteer transition which all RWD vehicles go through in a hard corner. The transition is sudden and can be violent. Once the oversteer begins, it may not stop. If you make the mistake of lifting off the throttle to try to regain control, the rear end can snap around almost instantly and no amount of counter steering is likely to save it.
The bottom line is: it's a truck. It's not meant to be cornered anywhere near it's limit.
My friend had a 97 explorer, when her swaybar links broke it made a huge noticable difference around corners. every corner felt like you could roll over at any second. But my dad's 93 GMC's swaybar links broke and it made no differnce at all. It really all depends on the vehicle.


