I know this type of question has probably been asked a lot before but I can't find a completely definitive answer, and that may be partly because I don't completely know what body roll can be described as. When I'm on the parkway doing like 70 and the road bends, the car feels very top heavy and it sort of wobbles back and forth as I take the turn (especially when there are bumps in the road) it almost feels like strong wind is blowing the car violently from side to side. I know that body roll is when you feel the car sort of swaying/tipping to the outside corner of a turn, but this almost feels like the car loses most of its stability and rocks back and forth. On my old car (a dodge stratus) I could take the exact same parkway at the same speeds and it would feel completely solid and fine. And the stratus isn't a sporty handling car by ANY means. What would be the best way to alleviate some of this, because I do a lot of driving on this parkway and I feel that if my 8 year old family sedan can outhandle the tC, something's weird.

 

Would this be the norther state or the southern state lol because I agree totally. From my reading here I've gathered that lowering springs and sway bars are the way to go to solve this problem. Most of what I've read glorify the Hotchkis sway bar set, as opposed to the TRD rear sway bar. I plan on going with one of the two mentioned above I just havent decided yet. Personally for daily driving alone I dont know if the Hotchkis set is worth it over the TRD rear hopefully someone else can clearify for me...I mean I am sure theyre good but I dont know if it is necessary.

 

Yea, actually the southern state is exactly what I'm talking about! I was looking into the Hotchkis too. If you get either, let me know if it makes any improvement.

 

Hotchkis is a cheap fix, real coil-overs is the best way to fix it, and you can adjust the height. Lowering the center of gravity will add stability at higher speeds as well.

 

I have a questions about sways because without seeing it installed, I can't quite tell what's going on.

When you go into a turn and the outside of the car compresses, the inside will want to unload. So, does the sway bar basically try to compress the inside track to push the body and wheels toward the road, instead of letting the inside ride up while the springs unload?

 

It's more for keeping the outside from compressing as much. It tries to keep both sides at the same height.

 

Here is a great explanation of what sway bars do & other interesting info:
http://www.hotchkistuning.com/bin/Mi...SwayTech-D.pdf

 

True, but you dont want to over lower your car. Although true that lowering your car alot will lower center of gravity, it will also lower roll center more then you want, especially on a mcpherson front suspension

 

for ythoe that dont want to follow the link sassyscion posted (cause its a PDF) what a sway bar does it aide in preventing torsion of the frame by attaching the frame to the struts via the sway bar.

 

Originally I thought that's all it did, but someone tried convincing me otherwise, so I thought maybe I am wrong.

Anyway, my original argument with this person was, why not just tighten up your springs and shocks so you won't need to stiffen the frame and you don't lose independence? He said, you need the sways... everything helps. Don't know... I kinda thought if you can do it with the springs and shocks and just stiffen those up in the rear, the rear sway bar wouldn't be so necessary.

 

TRD shocks and springs will help reduce it. and if you add on hotchkis sways, your getting rid of alot of body roll

 

after amarket springs and struts will help... but a good coilover set would be best IMO... adn theow in a set of sway bars. if you really want to notice a difference with stock suspension...SWAY BARS are failry east and inexpensive.

though i would advise against just getting new springs, this will also help, less then sways though. and you will need to get new struts eventually (with in 12-18 months) of just putting on new springs. the suspension is still fairly new on teh tc's so unles you go 30 over speed bumps youll have about a year before you HAVE to get struts...

 

Just doing coilovers is a very good idea to reduce body roll. Many road race cars do the same. The reason that we do a lowered spring and sway bar setup, or like on my TC a coilover and sway bar setup is to get the best of both worlds. You can run a stiffer than stock spring rate, but not increase the rate so much that it knocks your teeth out over every bump. You then add a sway bar, either a front and rear like ours or a rear like Progress and TRD to help reduce the body roll even more. The biggest problem is finding the happy medium between the two. Also what I may like as a ride with a spring rate, others may say it is to soft or stiff. These are all the things we look at as do many other companies.

 

Thanks for backing up what I said about the coilovers. Using coilovers with adjustable dampening is great and gives you a lot to work with (height, handling characteristics, and ride harshness/softness). The bars will add cornering ability regardless to what your spring setup will be. If everything's too stiff, it may be a little hard to judge. Things can get pretty snappy on a stiff setup and you can lose the back end faster than you'd expect.

Hotchkis bars with Progress C1 coilovers is probably the best possible combo right now for what's currently out. The Teins are great but not as agressive as the Progress. When I say the best I mean overall handling G's. I'm not including reliabilty, smoothness of the ride, or price. Hotchkis and Progress are great companies though, so I'm definately not knocking either for quality.

The choice is yours, how much do you really want to spend on handling? That's what it comes down to.

 

5 dolla!

 

Well just to let you know... I put the Tein Coilovers on ss-p (aka real coilovers as joe called it... lol) THat was good still had some roll... So I opted for the hotchkiss mainly cuz it has 3 settings... And let me tell you now I need some sort of lsd cuz I can take corners but im always lifting a wheel of the ground.... and when I hit a downgrade corner the front wheel lifts up now.

 

As cool as that sounds, you should readjust your equipment to keep the wheels planted, but I suppose it may be hard to keep the front wheels down on a negative slope.

 

my stuff is setup for hard cornering..... come out of a driveway slanted and lifts a wheel up cant adjust for that.... lol

 

A quick description on the operation of a sway bar. It doenst prevent torsion of the unibody, it does as Joe said above, it keeps the two springs compressing more equally. As the outside spring begins to compress through a corner, this places the sway bar in torsion, which in turn compresses the spring on the inside of the turn. Replacing the sway with a larger one that flexes less easily reduces the independence in the suspension further, which magnifies this effect. So a larger, stiffer sway (or setting an adjustable one to a stiffer setting) will reduce independence (And take away from the overall straight line ride) but will reduce roll even more.