Rear Sway Bar Question

[66 C10 383]

Say you have a normal everday street car with production size tire. You gently glide into a sweeping left hand curve on the highway and the car would "roll" towards the right hand side. So they run an "anti-roll" bar. A U-shaped bar that, as one side goes down it forces to other side to go up, thus keeping the suspension more level.

Now with more speeds & better tires, those same forces act the same but at more elevated rates. The bars, among other suspension parts, need to be beefier. That's why the wife's LeSabre has smaller sway bars than your autocross car does.

The LeSabre front bar may only be 5/16" where your race prepped sports car has a hollow light-weight 1.5" bar on front with your 335/30/18 sticky tires for autocross. The smaller bar will naturally have more flex to provide a compromise ride of cornering and ride comfort. The bigger bar with no flex is an all-out, in your face race piece with one purpose in mind. To keep that car flat in the corners at all costs.

Those same forces act on a car/truck when engine torque is applied. Even a 3.8 Monte Carlo torques to the right with even a small amount of gas is given when sitting at idle.

Big horsepower, sticky tires, and instant acceleration will cause the suspension to want to "roll" in the same direction, towards the right. That's why the left front tire unloads off the ground first.

So, you install a rear "anti-roll" bar on the rear so it will even out the loads from left to right. It tries to roll to the right but the bar prevents this and forces the left side back level. You come straight off the line with both sides of the suspension (and tires) being the same on both sides.

So, whether you have a bar on the front for street use, one on the front and rear for handling and/or racing, or one on the rear for launching, a sway bar, anti-sway bar, or anti-roll bars are indeed - all the same thing. Different manufacturers at the time called them differing names, just like with a posi rear diff, posi-traction, no-slip, limited slip, etc.

Let's just hope you don't have to employ your roll bar into this. That's when you're having a bad day ...