When it comes to suspension modifications, most people take their cues from fellow enthusiasts—buddies or message board gurus who own a similar car. The plan of attack? Parts sourcing? Those ideas usually come from peers. Of course, you can always count on websites and magazine ads to offer their two cents. Those dazzling pictures of shiny parts coupled with astounding …
Strut top bars can be effective on a-arm cars as well as McStrut cars. Many a-arm cars have the upper suspension member bolted somewhere near the strut. Loads from cornering are transferred into that structure and bracing can limit the movement of that structure, therefore limiting deflection of your upper suspension member under loading.
But if they don't have struts, are they still strut bars? 
Good list.
I had to laugh at one idiot that lowered his car way too much because 'it looks cool', induced unacceptable levels of bump steer and then despite accurate advice to raise the ride height, went out and spent hundreds of dollars on supposedly cool suspension components that had absolutely no effect on the problem he had caused himself. He ended up selling the car, having come to the wrong conclusion - he figured the car was useless instead of the obvious explanation, that he was an idiot.
Keith Tanner said:But if they don't have struts, are they still strut bars?
I always assumed that the 'strut' referred to the cool way one walks after installing the bar. 
wspohn said:Good list.
I had to laugh at one idiot that lowered his car way too much because 'it looks cool', induced unacceptable levels of bump steer and then despite accurate advice to raise the ride height, went out and spent hundreds of dollars on supposedly cool suspension components that had absolutely no effect on the problem he had caused himself. He ended up selling the car, having come to the wrong conclusion - he figured the car was useless instead of the obvious explanation, that he was an idiot.
One thing I found in Donohue's book as well as Horseman (aka Gulf Racing GT40/917s, maybe it was Wyer) and Yunick - all three of them found themselves chasing handling problems that turned out to be a gradual erosion of available suspension travel as the cars evolved. Larger tires, lower ride height, whatever.
This is a pretty good list.
It's good list indeed.................I've lost count of the number of cars I've climbed into where they have the damping cranked to eleven cuz it "feels" good to the uninitiated.
Also +1 on the bump stops.
"Just think how bad it would be to drive a car with a rear suspension that toes out as it rolls into a turn."
like the Mazda OEM DTSS system on the FC rx7? thats exactly whats it designed to do and everyone deletes this.
And the NC Miata rear suspension as well.
Then on the ND "sporty" suspension, Mazda jacked up the damping and the car felt fast but jitterbugged all over the place. I'm convinced this nervousness is why people love Bilstein so much, they figure it's sporty. Meanwhile, people seem disappointed that our stuff feels like the spring rates are softer than they are. That's because we're letting it move and we're giving it room to move!
These aren't just problems on low and fast cars. I have been studying suspensions on off-road vehicles, since I want to add one of the those to my fleet eventually.
When you lift a vehicle just by raising the static ride height like so many 'lift kits' do, you often lose a ton of the down travel, and consequently end up with handling and ride problems, and poor articulation. The 'engineering', if you want to call it that, which goes into a great deal (possibly a majority) of the suspension kits I've seen on the market is focused on making sure it looks cool and delivers exactly the amount of lift the box promises.
This issue is especially bad with independent suspensions, turns out you have to spend a lot of $$ to retain the factory range of travel or increase it.
What Keith is saying is the reason I am just refreshing my NC's suspension with new stock components, and saving my $$ for down the road to do a properly balanced setup like one of the ones he sells. I am quite thankful my NC didn't come with the so-called 'sport' suspension.
The early NC (2006-08) sport suspension went the other way - it was badly underdamped. By 2013, it was pretty competent. You know, Mazda got their special suspensions wrong a lot more than they got them right on the Miata...
Interestingly, down travel (aka droop) is more important in rock crawling than up travel (bump) is.
Hi Ben!
Keith Tanner said:And the NC Miata rear suspension as well.
Then on the ND "sporty" suspension, Mazda jacked up the damping and the car felt fast but jitterbugged all over the place. I'm convinced this nervousness is why people love Bilstein so much, they figure it's sporty. Meanwhile, people seem disappointed that our stuff feels like the spring rates are softer than they are. That's because we're letting it move and we're giving it room to move!
Square left in 50 caution ocean! - Author of How To Build a High Performance Mazda Miata
I've always felt this way about Koni's but on the high speed damping side. Compression cracks on the highway (for example) and ALL the jitteriness that wasn't there before. I have had them on more than one car, and it has been mentioned by more than one person w/o leading them to it.
Zombie bump-
The MINI favored oversteer at the limit, and was slowing down the car to the point I was considering down-sizing back to stock from the 22mm rear bar. Had I not rear this article, while searching for something else, I would've never tested the bars bushing resistance. Needless to say I could move it with two-hands with some effort.
So after some grinding, adding washers (+ a zerk that works really good on one side, and good enough on the other), I can now move the bar with two fingers. Thanks GRM!
fidelity101 (Forum Supporter) said:"Just think how bad it would be to drive a car with a rear suspension that toes out as it rolls into a turn."
like the Mazda OEM DTSS system on the FC rx7? thats exactly whats it designed to do and everyone deletes this.
That's... complicated. Swingarm suspensions naturally will toe out under cornering because of bushing flex. That's part of why 911s were such handfuls. Mazda tried to combat this by installing toe links to keep the arm from toeing out, and then that weird swing link on the trailing arm to keep everything from binding.
But then they decided that a small amount of toe out under LIGHT lateral loads was beneficial for snappy turn-in, so they mounted the wheel bearing in a separate knuckle on the swingarm with soft bushings in a certain place so the wheel would toe out under LIGHT loads.
But that was unacceptable for HEAVY cornering, so they had another bushing that was stiffer, that would compress the other way once cornering loads got heavier.
When everything was new, and you were on OE spec tires, it was fairly seamless. On grippier tires, it was a little wonky because the extra grip would overpower the bushings differently. And after a few dozen thousand miles, when the bushings aged, it could get downright scary.
So in 1986, DTSS was good. In 1996, it was not quite so good anymore. This is the downside of bushing kinematics.
Beam axle suspensions have a similar problem, the beam flexes under cornering loads, causing toe-out. This was traditionally battled by lots of static camber and toe-in in the rear. VW basically invented kinematics (sorry Mazda) with the Rabbit by putting the beam bushings on little ramps, so side loads would push the outside forward, toeing in the wheel to compensate. They went more extreme on the A2 chassis cars with the ramp design. BUT. Some VW A1/A2 autocrossers have discovered that mounting those ramped bushings backwards will make for some wicked turn-in. It's sketchy at high speed, but, autocross.
My 4th gen has too much rear roll stiffness. I have Konis, a new sway bar and new brakes and fluid to do all in the rear soon. The new smaller sway bar will help a lot too. I may do all this in one day if I'm productive and lucky,
BA5 said:Keith Tanner said:But if they don't have struts, are they still strut bars?
I always assumed that the 'strut' referred to the cool way one walks after installing the bar.
No. It's the things that keep your Cessna from becoming a lawn dart.
In reply to Appleseed : Unless you're flying the prettiest Cessna, the Cardinal RG.
Had an experience with an early '80's Open Senator, a big rear drive GM German sedan about 3500lbs/180hp. It was then typical European in that they had severe understeer at max and also severe lift-off oversteer when the driver ran out of road. It was difficult to drive at maximum; the only way to drive it was to lift on and off power several times per corner when the first hint of excess understeer so it didn't snap. Later versions changed the front swaybar mounting. Instead of an end link to the front suspension arm the end link was mounted to the reinforced exterior of the strut itself. This change apparently resulted in much more effective front swaybar reducing the understeer at max allowing max cornering to be more balanced so that if power was reduced the change wasn't as drastic. A larger dia front swaybar alone apparently did not solve their problem.
I have 3 subarus, all different and all different suspension wise. The 05 wagon has upgraded bars front and rear and coilovers and depending on my taste at the time runs on anything 235/45-17s to 225/50-16 rubber. I havent figured out what wheel tire combo I like best on it yet but leaning more towards the 16s for the lowered ride height and gearing advantage, never mind the slightly smaller contact patch. On 225/45-17s I played with it at VIR a couple of years ago and had a great time with it and found it to be the best balanced of the 3 cars at the limit, possible to almost get oversteer but its mostly just neutral...almost no matter what you do. Thats a pretty happy occurrance for an all wheel drive car.
The 07 wagon has a mostly spec b suspension on featuring the factory bilsteins and their strut bushings, with aftermarket variable rate springs and stock sway bars. Handling characteristics are quite good but with a bit more understeer at the limit than the 05, due mostly I think to the factory sway bar sizes. That may get changed at some point. The bilsteins ride quite a bit rougher than the coilovers and that also applies the bilstein setup on the 09 WRX. The WRX has aftermarket bars on it that make it fairly neutral in moderate speed corners but like most awd, it pushes in very slow corners. I couldn't make it work for me as a good autocross car for a number of different reasons, turbo lag, slow corner push, and my basic unwillingness to abuse the car enough to make it rotate when it didnt really want to. So its a street car ONLY now.
I like the feel of the bilsteins under performance driving conditions generally but find them a bit harsh for street use. Nevertheless I live with them because the make the car predictable and in an emergency I want the predictability they give me...its a small price to pay I guess.
In reply to Keith Tanner :
"Meanwhile, people seem disappointed that our stuff feels like the spring rates are softer than they are."
Well not exactly everyone, as I really like my FM Fox setup on my MSM. Not quite the Penske's precision on the RX-7, but an awesome blend for street and occasional "zoom-zoom" tarmac weekends. <all plug intended> Certainly world better than te MSM's over-dampened OEM Bilsteins.
I have to wonder how much better my two bilstein cars would be with a different spring shock setup, but given the cost of doing the changeover to quality coilovers or even just a good high quality shock and coil spring ala factory type, I just cant justify spending the money to find out as an experiment. I'm sure I'd be glad I did after the fact, but then the idiot that didnt see me would plow into me and destroy the work I had just completed, and there is no compensation available for that scenario. How much money can you justify putting into a street car that stands a fair chance of getting taken out by a deer or inattentive driver? As the cost of hardware skyrockets and my income droops, (thanks stock market), I think I will hold with what I have and do required replacements only. When the time comes and I NEED new shocks on the WRX it might be time for a nice set of coilovers then. I am guessing I have bought my last set of bilsteins. Although I have to say they worked well on my old Nova way back when. There might be a few here who remember it.
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