I was talking with a friend who races stock cars. Unlike the States, stock cars circuits here are all road courses, no roundy-roundy stuff. Quite by accident, the subject turned to suspensions, and more specifically, sway bars. He told me of an adjustable ON-THE-FLY system that sounds so criminally simple, I can´t believe that nobody has adapted it to a 4x4. Maybe it has been done, but I´ve never heard of it.

He´s gonna send me some pics and when he does, I´ll post them. In the meantime, I´ll try to explain the idea, at least how it was explained to me.....


Imagine, instead of the conventional round torsion type bar fixed to the two chassis rails and then down to the axle, a long flat leaf spring in a position parallel and I would assume, directly over the axle. Looking from the wheel hub, it´d look like this:

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OK, now imagine that this leaf spring, held in some sorta bushing arrangement could rotate about its long axis so that instead of being horizontal, it´s vertical, like this:

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Viola, the suspension just got stiff!!!

I know there´s prolly reasons why this would be difficult to put in paractice on a rig, due to flex issues and other shite I haven´t yet thought of. But the basic idea is most cool, IMO.

Any thoughts??

Haven't seen that on stock cars, but F1 cars have been using a variation of that for quite some time... kinda complex for a swaybar (limited use as a swaybar except as a RockRod in TJs, IMHO), but this would be pretty cool implemented in a 1/4-elyptic... though you'd probably have to run some form of bell-crank and linkage to keep the spring in column for long travel....

Randii

sprint and speedway cars use that setup here in the U.S.

What´s it called?? I did a search on Google using a few terms like "sway bar" and "flat" and "adjustable", but got nothing good........ :confused:

so what you are saying is its an adaptation of the original vw bug front suspension thats been around for over half a century , and been used off road almost as long? ... great idea.. just wish i was born long enough ago to be the first guy to use it...:flipoff2: