Date:         Sat, 12 May 2007 20:08:35 -0700
Reply-To:     Don Hanson <dhanson@GORGE.NET>
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         Don Hanson <dhanson@GORGE.NET>
Subject:      Aftermarket suspension parts..
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="Windows-1252"

Interesting subject, suspension mods..A lot more complicated than you might think.  

  Suspensions work as a whole system.  Adding just one new piece, without adjusting everything else is usually not effective.  For example, the rear sway bar.  While it will feel like the vehicle works better, you can almost count on it working worse..Because you've just changed one part of the system, which means all the other stuff is now not working at optimum..
  What the sway bar does is to transfer some of the body roll down to the wheels. A trade off.   So in exchange for less body roll, you get more weight transfer between the wheels, for one thing..Plus, now the front is 'out of whack' because before the change, it was set to work as well as possible, but after swapping a sway bar, you would need to go to the front end and do some adjusting there, or at least change THAT bar, also.
  You have to keep in mind that your vehicle is sitting on four springs..depress or lift any one, or two of those springs, be it by going round a corner, doing a wheelie in your SVX Syncro, getting blasted by wind off a triple trailer UPS truck or whatever, and all the other wheels do something..  One thing that helped me visualize suspensions when I was wrenching on my race car...Take a couple of pencils or sticks, cross them, then put em in your hand, horizontal to the earth.  Rotate your wrist slightly and see which way all four ends of the sticks move...Move one, they all go... Same-o when you are talking about your vehicle suspension.  Four corners..
  Don Hanson