TRD rear bar
 

Bought it last fall used, finally installed it today. No ramps or lifts, just wiggling under the car...what a pain in the ___. Easy install, 15 minutes even without the lift or ramps.

Next, rims and tires.

Attachment 58480

wow... no jack or anything? thats pretty crazy! sweet!

nice! it'll definitely be a nice noticeable improvement on turns.

My back still hurts from all the twisting around....LOL
I'll be checking it out tomorrow to see if it makes much difference in the handling.

you will have now oversteer on wet if you turn to hard or step of the gas to quickly in the middle of the corner, my advice be careful on wet street

NEWS to me, must only happen on xb1's or probably not at all......

if you add the energy suspension sway bar end links you will have greater handling with minimal oversteer. the only way you would get oversteer with just the rear bar is if you went hard into a corner or were hooning and let off the gas. the natural thing for a fwd to do is pull when you are on the gas when you let off your front tires will be trying to engine brake and steer and thats where the oversteer comes in. all you have to do is drive the car within its ability and you should be fine.

like i said, must only happen with boxes or maybe i can't tell seeing as i have 4 underbraces and 2 uppers as well as a sway bar on my yaris.....

lol its a typical fwd thing

damn I need a rear sway bar now. I'm tired of understeering

Left foot breaking is your friend, master it!

I've noticed no adverse handling, wet or dry....

I rolled under with the rear tires on double-stacked 2x12's. Took 20 minutes, mostly trying to get the damn wood to stay still when driving up on it. The ride is identical as far as i can tell, but the body roll in the rear (and therefore overall) is noticeably less. for $100 off ebay, I'm happy. I probably gained 5mph of comfort zone for turns.

Still, it's no BMW.

xA or xB should have come with one from the factory. After I installed one, I noticed huge improvement in handling of my xA.
Install was totally uneventful.

Agreed. I'm not so sure about the bushings people keep putting in. Some parts of suspension and steering should have play. Heck, many parts should. Makes me nervous.

Econobox, are you a technician because if you are, you should probably think about going back to school and getting educated about steering and suspension systems before you start posting things if you don't know how your car operates as a unit. When you get your tires aligned that means that there is no play in your steering and suspension. In fact it is better to get it as tight as possible so you know how your car is going to act when going over bumps or other road imperfections. Let's say your theory and you go over a pot hole, when your wheel dips down it decompresses your suspension and increases poitive camber, when your wheel catches the other side of the pot hole, it kicks out to the side and increases positive toe angle and will try and pull the car in that direction. By your theory, that is called play or sloppy steering. This usually caused by worn out components. Now if everything had been tight, your wheel still wouldve followed the road imperfection but the tire would have stayed aligned and following the same path down the road and keeping proper alignment.

Oh boy! A flame!

Your steering and suspension have play on purpose. Shocks and springs have play built in. If they didn't, you'd feel every single little bump. Suspension is for absorbing energy and keeping wheels straight on the road. Yes, that means the system isn't quite as tight, but it also means less harshness and even more grip. When springs are too stiff, when shocks are too stiff, and when bushings are too stiff, tires lose contact with the road in bumps and corners.

If you really wanted to get direct steering, you'd skip the poly and use solid bushings. The car will steer well on a track, but will suck on the street.

My other car, a BMW 550i, has wider wheels in the back than front. This leads to lots of understeer, as the front loses grip before the back. At the same time, it makes more rear end grip for when I play in a corner using the big V8. Still, I need to change my alignment so the front has a more aggressive bite while lessening the grip in the back. That will give me a more neutral, predictable, aggressive car, even as I reduce grip in places.

Things are not as straightforward as you make them out to be. Sometimes you want more grip, sometimes you want less. Sometimes you want more stiffness, sometimes you want less. Rubber makes fantastic bushings for street cars because it keeps suspension in place while absorbing energy.

Now I understand where you going, however your terminaology is slightly off. Play is bad, refers to being loose. You do want your suspension to move but only certain components and only those are meant to move a certain way. Manufacturers use rubber bushings because they deflect easily and absorb road noise and imperfections but are not good for performance. You do not want play or loosness in your springs because it would cause the vehicle to bounce when going over bumps. Your train of thought is right, terminology is off.

Meh. I think it's just semantics. One man's "play" is another man's "precise engineering tolerances" is another man's "intended softness." Take the WRX. It's loosy goosy on the track, but kickass on the bumps, mud, and gravel. Lexus steering often has huge on-center play. It makes interstate driving much easier. They're just tradeoffs.

Though the xA should have come with the rear sway bar. It's downright criminal that it didn't. You trade a tiny bit of rear comfort for a massing reduction in roll and a huge increase in confidence.