i have

gmfront strut bar
custom rear strut bar
22mm rear sway bar retro fitted off a fiero
19mm front bar with poly endlinks and poly D bushings
kyb agx and tien s-tech
15" wheels with falken ziex 512's ~38psi

around 40 mph if i move the wheel back and forth i feels a little squishy and un-perscise and coming out of a fast corner it can feel a little squirly when straightening it back out. I am trying to figure out waht would fix this best, my thoughts are:

could the 15" wheels be a problem would 17" with the smaller sidewall help? or is the soft sidewall of the falkens causing this? what tires have a good stiff sidewall and good traction?

other thing i thought is that i may need a larger front sway bar, or is it a combo of all 3?

any ideas which if any of these would help the problem the most? thanks for any input

will

Do you have control arm bushings?

How are the sidewalls on your tires? A week/thin sidewall can give you that squishy feeling in turns. 17's would give you less of and a firmer sidewall.

The first thing I would do is get rid of your mismatched sway bar setup and go with the ProKits and some AGX struts which are very reasonable.
Get OEM's front camber plates and rear pillow balls to replace your strut mounts and some of that squishy feeling will be removed with more smiles on you face.
As EcoCav stated, control arm bushings are a necessity for less play and squish and get a trunk bar to help stiffen up the chassis in the rear for less squirm.

Good luck with it and keep carving up the roads.


Misnblu.com
Newbie member since 1999
Thank you Dave and JBO!

i dont have control arm bushings but have been considering them especially to eliminate some wheel hop. the falken ziex have pretty soft sidewalls especially in a 15 but i like keeping my rotating mass down/closer to the center for acceleration purposes, considering a tire with firmer sidewall when these go bad any suggestions?

i already have tein s-techs and agx per what i wrote above,

i dont know if i want to get into any aftermarket strut mounts especially in the rear, since i cut the rubber down to help lower it more, and not sure if the $$ is worth it
and i have a trunk bar as well per above, although i am considering reinforcing it more.

you think my front swaywbar is too small? i know its not the biggest out there but with the poly bushings it felt way better, and since i put the rear swaybar on the rear feels much better, i still think the problam may lie with the tires more than anything, but since control arm bushings were already a possibility and i wanted to get rid of wheel hop and they dont cost much $ i will probably do those as my next step and see how it feels after that.

thanks

Yeah, your front sway bar is actually too small and you're still getting alot of weight transfer (too much) because of the larger bar in the rear and smaller bar in the front.
Generally, you want a larger front bar and smaller rear bar since more weight lies on the front wheels which needs a stiffer bar to help keep the car true and steady in the corners.

Keep the springs and struts then and forgo the solid strut mounts if you've modified the rears already.
Any pics of said trunk bar and how it's mounted?

And tires are a major consideration when it comes to all out handling and one of the biggest things you can do to make a car handle better.
I'm not a tire expert so can't make any recommendations to you on the tires you may be looking for so do some research on TireRack.com and other online tire outlets.

Good luck.



Misnblu.com
Newbie member since 1999
Thank you Dave and JBO!

no pics of the trunk bar its pretty solid square metal tubing welded to to pieces of metal i believe they are part of a brake shoe, (they had just the right curve) i can tell when its not on there, it actually made more of a difference than i expected, i wasnt really expecting much... i will start looking for a larger front sway bar then the weight transfer makes perfect sense and i have a lot of weight reduction as well and naturally a lot of it comes from the rear, (rear seats spare etc) so most of the weight is deifnately in the front what size bar do you think I should go with 24-26mm?

i think the FE3 bar might be good... 24mm need to find a wrected 03 ls sport

How about a rear tie bar, front k-member, and front custom sub-frame.

All supplied by me!?

LOL

i actualy have a front sub frame brace, its not a K brace but it did help alot, forgot to mention that... im going to work on the front for now, but how much on the tie bar?