Rear Sway Bar

Ordered mine as well. Should be here this week!

 

i'm concerned we may need spacer plates since the prothanes are smaller than stock. good thing is the prothanes can be installed without disconnecting the end links. i may have to mess with it tomorrow after work.

 

Spacer Plates? Are you not using the Brackets that come with the new Prothane Polyurethane Bushings?



Did your Progress Bar Part # 62.2150 come Silver or Red?

 

I believe with FF cars it is good to stiffen the rear bar while having a lesser bar on the front. This bar should theoretically improve handling in a good way.

 

Odd you'd think if this was true - The Toyota engineers would have used a different mm sizes in the Touring Prius instead of 22mm in front and 20mm in rear.

 

• Understeer: reduce front or increase rear anti-roll/ sway bar settings.
• Oversteer: increase front or reduce rear anti-roll/ sway bar settings.

Obviously Toyota was compensating for the extra weight from the electric motor. and they set up the sway bars to reduce understeer. With front wheel drive, understeer is more desirable because it is more predictable. but it is all relative to your driving style and what you are setting the car up for.

 

personally I don't really like how the Prius doesn't feel very planted in the corners upgrading sway bars would be a good way to improve this.

 

Agreed. I'm guessing with 24mm 2006 Matrix Front Sway bar with Polyurethane Bushings, 24mm Rear Progress bar, Tanabe Sustec Front Under brace, Front Strut Bar Brace and the car lowered on Ground Control Coil-Overs - I can't wait to test out some corners.

 

If only the Prius wasn't a solid rear axle then giving your car some camber would be an improvement. I wonder if anyone has experimented with caster plates for the Prius on this forum?

 

I've posted this before, and I'll post it again... throwing parts at a car without understanding what they'll do can make your handling worse.

Putting a stiffer front bar on a FWD car is going to cause it to understeer even more. You want both tires loaded as much as possible in a turn, and a stiffer bar is going to unload the inside tire when the outside tire is quite loaded. Some FWD racers will go as far as disconnecting the front bar altogether... although this must be done with careful consideration of suspension geometry: at extreme angles, wheel camber can change significantly in some cars.

Putting a stiffer rear bar on is the best you can do for this car, although be careful as you can end up with rear wheel lift on a hard corner (see pic below). On a race course this can be a good thing, as it'll allow you to rotate the car much more quickly in a tight corner.

On a public road, in a low traction condition (such as rain), this could mean you spin out into a telephone pole.

If you don't know why you're swapping bars, other than "some dude on the Internet said it's good", you should do a little more homework.

 

Read more: http://priuschat.com/threads/rear-sway-bar.53494/page-14#ixzz2LwoWpzqz

Could not put it better myself but to stop people from doing stupid things to there cars is like trying to tell a rainbow not to bow. In the end you are just a crazy guy screaming at a rainbow.

sort of like this guy.

I do not agree with changing the front sway bar although I do think upgrading the rear sway bar as well as adding a pan hard bar to our cars would be a good idea if you wanted to race your Prius on a track against other vehicles in your class. Also it would be good to dial in some positive caster but these changes would dramatically increase under steer on our cars and would be best tested on the track and not the street. Also we will never know if the steering shaft will be able to stand the excess punishment from these changes until someone tries them. My hypothesis is probably not for long since the steering shafts are pretty week on our cars to begin with.

 

Glad you like my YouTube video! Did you see the one of the guy talking to the chair? Now HE'S a loony!

I'm learning a lot about FWD tuning through building up a Neon as a track racer... hoping to transfer this knowledge to my Prius, and maybe even some other Prius heads, but I agree. Like a fish swimming upstream in a sea of proud ignorance sometimes.

Sorry, got to run, a leaf just blew onto my back porch. I gotta go scream at the wind.

 

I'll be quite honest - never even heard of a Pan hard Rod. Mugen made one for an old 3rd Gen (1984–1987) Civics but haven't seen anything close for our cars - Would def have to be custom. See item #156 in TOP picture.

 

Hey look there is my other car, and yes you are right 3rd gen civics had these originally and when you lowered your civic this bar would cause rear alignment issues. our cars don't have these and would benefit from fabricating up some mounts and installing one.

Here is a wiki link on them:
Panhard rod - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

while sway bars prevent roll it does nothing to prevent the rear axle from moving laterally. this is a big issue with solid rear axle cars and a pan hard bar can be a solution for this. basically it is the difference from driving a car that has a trailer on the back and makes it feel more like a rollercoaster.

there are universal ones available an adjustable one would be a good way to go you will have to do this by making your own mounts I will try and find some examples.

 

especially if a car has thin trailing arms this is a must if you want to achieve greater g forces.

 

So if a decided bar length was found - Don't think it would be too hard to fab up. Here is a sample Custom mount.



All this talk makes me want to find an old AE86 to fix up!

 

How so? The Prius rear suspension uses a trailing-arm design; they're not located via leaf springs, as are the cars that typically use panhard bars.

Edit: I'm reading that the design incorporates some arm deformation to achieve toe-out reduction under cornering. That being said, is the deformation of the trailing arms that significant in comparison? Has anyone measured it? To recommend a fix without sizing up the problem is questionable...

 

Note the leaf springs in that picture. There may be a reason panhard bars aren't seen anymore... we don't see leaf springs in passenger cars these days!

 

Delivered!

 

Just found out they made one for my 4runner. It didn't use leaf springs. The 2011 Mustang still uses Pan Hard Brace.