Project Nissan Sentra Spec-V part 4: Installing Sway Bars

Project Nissan Sentra Spec-V part 4: Installing Sway Bars

By Mike Kojima

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Part of any good handling package includes the antisway bars or swaybars for short. Swaybars help resist body roll and keep the car flat in corners. For racing, adjustable swaybars are important because adjusting the stiffness of the front or rear bars helps adjust the amount of under or oversteer a car will exhibit under hard cornering. Adjustable bars are critical as they can be adjusted at the track much faster than changing springs or other ways of altering roll stiffness to change the understeer to oversteer ratio when tuning the suspension to suit the situation.

For a rear bar we used this racing sway bar from Speedway Engineering. This is a real racing part and requires finish fabrication to install it on a car.

When we started our project, we knew that swaybars would be a problem as the choices for the Spec-V are very limited and the only adjustable bar was a simple bolt on one from Progress in the rear. With no other choices we were forced to draw on our racing experience and adapt various parts from stock car racing and other sources.

Ritchy Watanabe did a great job modifying our chassis to use this bar. Ritchie drilled the arms for multi adjustment points so we could quickly and easily vary the bars stiffness between sessions at the track.