Quote:
Originally Posted by acrace
I was going to enter an explanation of the effects of a lever arm, but the sway bar entry from wikipedia does a pretty good job. Excerpted:
A sway bar is usually a torsional spring that resists body roll motions. It is usually constructed out of a U-shaped piece of steel that connects to the body at two points, and at the left and right sides of the suspension. If the left and right wheels move together, the bar just rotates about its mounting points and does not bend. If the wheels move relative to each other, the bar is forced to twist.
The bar resists the bending through its stiffness. The stiffness of an anti-roll bar is based on the fourth power of its diameter, the stiffness of the material, the inverse of the length of the lever arms (i.e., the shorter the lever arm, the stiffer the bar), the geometry of the mounting points, and the rigidity of the bar's mounting points. Some anti-roll bars, particularly those intended for use in auto racing, are adjustable, allowing their stiffness to be altered by increasing or reducing the length of the lever arms. This permits the roll stiffness to be tuned for different situations without replacing the entire bar. The stiffer the bar, the more force required to move the left and right wheels relative to each other. This increases the amount of force required to make the body roll.
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OK.
So you change the LENGTH of the end links to make the bar stiffer/or less stiff in a typical adj bar.
Looking at the Pfadt bar, it looks like the link SLIDES to & away from the center of the bar. So it increases/decreases the overall length of the bar. Is that correct (Pfadt vendor?)
