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Body roll = when your car leans during cornering
Chassis flex = The actual metal of you chassis flexes and bends under stress of cornering.
A strut tower bar helps reduce some chassis flex when the thin metal of the strut tower flexes. When cornering, much more stress is put on one tower than the other. By connecting your two strut towers you have much more rigidty. If your strut towers flex your steering won't feel as solid and it could possibly even affect your alignment while cornering.
A sway bar helps reduce body roll at the expense of some traction. It basically connects the suspension of the left side with the right side. Without a sway bar the right and left suspension acts independently. Your springs push both tires to the ground as
forcefully and with as even a pressure as they can. This force will not be even because one spring is compressed much more than the other but a sway bar makes this worse. With a sway bar, when your outside (outside in respect to the turn) suspension is pushed upward the sway bar will push upward on the inside suspension also. This will put more even pressure on your springs therefore reducing body roll/leaning. The downside is that it reduces traction. This is because the weight is transferred from the inside wheel to the outside wheel. In other words since the sway bar is pushing up on the inside suspension it tends to lift that tire up off the ground. This will put more weight on the outside tire. Two tires with 500 pounds of pressure will have more traction than 1 tire with 1000 pounds of pressure because there is more contact patch.
Now here's how the sway bar connects the suspension:
*See picture*
When you lift at point A the part of the bar connected to the chassis will twist. This will in turn lift on the other side of the bar at point B.
Last edited by HobieKopek; Apr 25, 2003 at 12:51 AM.
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