Sway Bar/Anti-Roll Bar/Stabilizer

Zero_Falcon · Post by **Zero_Falcon** » Tue May 10, 2011 4:31 pm

So I've gotten this hop-up, the sway bars, for my R/C... (sway bar is coloured yellow)

Sway Bars tie the suspensions at both ends together and help to reduce chassis roll and keeping the tires of on-road cars planted on the road.

On the 2 'latches' in the middle of the sway bar there are grub screws which can be tightened or loosened to decrease or increase sway bar clearance respectively (...Right?). atm I have no idea what sway bar clearance does.

My questions are:

- I can, like, move the rear sway bar side to side. Is it supposed to do that? (I can't on the front sway bar. Or else, is the front sway bar supposed to be able to move side to side?)

- When the suspension on one end compresses, what goes on with the sway bar to make it compress the other suspension? And what role does sway bar clearance play here?

[off-topic on off-topic thread]

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madpeople · Post by **madpeople** » Tue May 10, 2011 4:39 pm

Play with it, wiggle one end of the suspension and see what happens with the other.

Pay attention to where it's attached in the middle.

Adjust the height, play with it some more, see how it's different.

avirst · Post by **avirst** » Tue May 10, 2011 4:51 pm

Related - what model R/C do you have, I know it is a decent 4 wheel drive, on road, with the parts being arranged the way they are. I'm interested in getting one can you give me your opinion on what would be great starting off with and what radio transceiver would be recommended.

Psychosis · Post by **Psychosis** » Tue May 10, 2011 5:00 pm

Wikipedia had a decent write up

and shoot it up for How Stuff Works!!!
QUOTE A stabilizer bar tries to keep the car's body flat by moving force from one side of the body to another. To picture how a stabilizer bar works, imagine a metal rod that is an inch or two (2 to 5 cm) in diameter. If your front tires are 5 feet (1.6 meters) apart, make the rod about 4 feet long. Attach the rod to the frame of the car in front of the front tires, but attach it with bushings in such a way that it can rotate. Now attach arms from the rod to the front suspension member on both sides.

When you go into a turn now, the front suspension member of the outside of the turn gets pushed upward. The arm of the sway bar gets pushed upward, and this applies torsion to the rod. The torsion them moves the arm at the other end of the rod, and this causes the suspension on the other side of the car to compress as well. The car's body tends to stay flat in the turn.

If you don't have a stabilizer bar, you tend to have a lot of trouble with body roll in a turn. If you have too much stabilizer bar, you tend to lose independence between the suspension members on both sides of the car. When one wheel hits a bump, the stabilizer bar transmits the bump to the other side of the car as well, which is not what you want. The ideal is to find a setting that reduces body roll but does not hurt the independence of the tires.[/quote]

Ramaglor · Post by **Ramaglor** » Tue May 10, 2011 6:56 pm

Rofl, those are some cute McPherson struts you have there.

Anti-roll basics: The purpose of anti roll is to allow greater control of wheel rates (force required to move wheels up and down per distance) and roll rate (g's per degree of roll). There's lots of nasty math and geometry in it, but the following is how anti roll affects steady state cornering: increase roll stiffness in the rear and you will have less grip in the rear. Decrease roll stiffness in the rear and you will have more grip in the rear.

Zero_Falcon · Post by **Zero_Falcon** » Wed May 11, 2011 1:30 am

avirst wrote:QUOTE (avirst @ May 11 2011, 12:51 AM) Related - what model R/C do you have, I know it is a decent 4 wheel drive, on road, with the parts being arranged the way they are. I'm interested in getting one can you give me your opinion on what would be great starting off with and what radio transceiver would be recommended.

Actually the car in the photo isn't mine, I was too lazy to upload the photos of my R/C from my phone =3

And I'm also quite new to the hobby as well...

The car in the photo is Tamiya's TA05, I'm using TA05 ver. II, which of course has several improvements over its predecessor. Assembling it wasn't any problem, I've just managed to perfect its handling after days of tuning (and the sway bars helped lots!) so now it's running really sweet...

...I'm still using a stock brushed motor atm, hope to upgrade to a 17.5T brushless motor required to compete at the circuit contests.

This is TA05 ver. II (from tamiyausa.com) (It's the R variant, you pay a few $100 more to get the upgrade parts, other than that it's not much different from the regular one):

As for the transmitter/receiver, Sanwa's Blazer II works well for me, it's made in China, the packaging looks cheap, but well, it's cheap!

Why not you try Tamiya's EXPEC GT-I 2.4GHz Radio Control Set, it does not have (or need) an antenna pole, requires only 4 AA batteries instead of the usual 8 and does not require frequency crystals. Sweet stuff.

avirst · Post by **avirst** » Wed May 11, 2011 2:13 pm

Ooo, veri-nice

MrChaos · Post by **MrChaos** » Wed May 11, 2011 9:24 pm

Why do you feel you need a brushless motor instead of a brushed version Zero?

edit:

never mind this is some huge, endless debate vortex in the RC hobby about the two (along with "gas" powered RCs) and it has a of legion fanboys for all choices.

Sycrus · Post by **Sycrus** » Wed May 11, 2011 9:30 pm

My roommates and I just picked up a gas powered RC car for $450, and we've already put $90 and hours of stripping wires, splinting the frame and dis/reassembling the engine. The $#@!er can hit 60+ mph, so who wouldn't take it off a few lips on the PT field?

Zero_Falcon · Post by **Zero_Falcon** » Thu May 12, 2011 5:55 am

MrChaos wrote:QUOTE (MrChaos @ May 12 2011, 05:24 AM) Why do you feel you need a brushless motor instead of a brushed version Zero?

Well, the contest rules state that every car must use a 17.5T brushless...