Do not remove your sway bar!

does not mean you cannot make them.

 

So where do you drive, in the water?

 

it has only been 2 years, and the thread has a bunch of holes.... so...

European cars (aka Germany) actually dislike swayers. Instead they have extra heavy duty springs to actually control the car. The USA is too lazy and like soft suspension, so swaybars are added to mitigate the soft suspension.

If you take a swayer off on stock soft suspension, the results will be bad. Don't do it. However, if you have upgraded suspension with increased front spring rates, it could be ok. This is what the europeans do. In the USA swayers are primarily tuned to dial in the over/under steer of the vehicle.

 

Correct. In America/Canada. Swaybars allow a softer suspension while still dialing in handling as far as oversteer/understeer calibration goes. A swaybars primary function is to reduce traction to dial in balanced handling for the vehicle. If you need a car to have more understeer you can run softer spring rates (as most auto manufactures like for comfort reasons) if you add a larger front swaybar, which in turn adds more understeer to allow greater 'safety'. Cars sold in Europe favor a smaller swaybars (or none) with much stiffer spring rates to perform better, at the cost of a firmer ride.

Laziness would not be the PC correct term. I just resent the watered down engineering we get (aka laziness) when much better factory options are available abroad. But this does not apply to our trucks (to my knowledge), just performance cars from abroad.

Aka, heavier duty springs can potentially neglect the need for swayers, just like they favor in Europe, IF you are running HD springs.

 

From the wiki article:
"The other function of anti-roll bars is to tune the handling balance of a car. Understeer or oversteer behavior can be tuned out by changing the proportion of the total roll stiffness that comes from the front and rear axles. Increasing the proportion of roll stiffness at the front increases the proportion of the total load transfer that the front axle reacts to—and decreases the proportion that the rear axle reacts to. In general, this makes the outer front wheel run at a comparatively higher slip angle, and the outer rear wheel to run at a comparatively lower slip angle, which is an understeer effect. Increasing the proportion of roll stiffness at the rear axle has the opposite effect and decreases understeer."

The swaybar is merely a tool to balance the chassis for desired oversteer/underststeer effect and mitigate body roll. Most manufactures favor understeer for safety reasons.

These same effects can be dialed in without swaybars using stiffer coils instead. However historically America vehicles have favored softer suspension than their European counterparts, which requires larger diameter swaybars, compared to a vehicle with stiffer suspension which can do with smaller swaybars. Some much older European cars would do away with the swaybar in favor of the stiffer spring rates. Modern cars will have swaybars to dial the car in exactly where the manufacture wants the oversteer/understeer without providing an unnecessarily firm ride.

 

I've taken mine on and off a few times now and I have to say I much prefer the truck with the sway bar on. I notice a huge difference in on-road handling performance. I have Icon coilovers with reservoirs and CDC's. Even with these relatively stiff coilovers at various damper settings, the difference is night and day for me. The truck has a much higher tendency to understeer, especially on freeway interchanges and on/ramps when you're turning 270 degrees at a decent speed.

The people that are saying they don't feel a difference probably shouldn't be turning a wrench on their vehicles and leave it to competent mechanics. I suggest keeping the swaybar on if your driving your truck on-road most of the time.

 

What would be ideal, is a dual rate swaybar like I had on my Jeep. One rate for on road, flip a switch and a second rate for off-road. This is different from the factory wrangler swaybar disconnect. I haven't seen anything like this for the Tacomas.

http://www.jeepforum.com/forum/f9/s...review-564087/#/forumsite/20623/topics/564087

 

I don't know about Tacoma sway bar disconnecting but my 03 ranger 4x4 had the sway bar links rust off. I drove it for a long time that way before I noticed visually that they were gone. I never did repair it. Never noticed a darn bit of difference.

 

I have never seen or heard of a single European/German vehicle that didn't have at least a front sway bar and most a rear as well. Do you have any examples?

I spent 3 years in Germany. Wrenched on a lot of cars over there at the post auto shop.

 

Here is a half way decent article on swaybar tuning for those interested. Note that it also states some cars do not run sway bars.
http://iracing.wikidot.com/components:anti-roll-bar-sway-bar

I believe the original GTI did not run rear sway bar, and some 80s era BMWs did not run rear bars either. Without searching, I have no solid example for a car that runs neither. I went to school to engineer, design and build cars. It may be academic but I can tell you we studied suspension design and covered cars that opted not to run swaybars in favor of stiffer suspension. The make/models were not important at the time as was the design concept.

 

Uh ok.

It was your supposition that German cars didn't like sway bars.

We're not really talking rear sway bars here; never really saw a rear sway bar on any Tacoma ive encoutered.

I know my FJ40's never had a sway bar and Fj55 had a rear only sway bar. Only car I know of without a front sway.

Your point about stiffer springs compensating for body roll is agreeable however.

 

link = A bench racing blog without real world references...

 

Haven't had a sway bar in almost 3 years. Best move I ever made, way back when I was on 5100's and OME coils.

And quick discos would be sweet, unfortunately nobody has taken the time to create them for the Taco. Jeeps have many options to do so.