Sway Bar

[ratorrey]

Am I correct in all that I have read here that the Aspire sway bar is a direct fit onto the Festiva?? And it will be an upgrade compared to the Festiva sway bar?? Just found one at a better than cheap price.. Figure I will do both control arms, sway bar and bushings all at once..

[Advancedynamix]

It is only an upgrade if you plan to carry heavy loads in your car or pull a trailer. Front sway bars on FWD cars are counterproductive. They do limit body roll, but they also limit traction and they limit the suspensions ability to compensate for irregularities in the road. Since you are in Maine, your most likely going to need all the traction you can get and you'll want your front suspension to be able to adapt to those potholes and frost heaves. I'd stick with the stock festiva bar and upgrade the bushings.

[BigElCat]

I'm keeping the stock sway bar on mine, with upgraded bushings in the planning stage.

The Aspire sway bar requires some modification around the lower radiator hose. I don't know any more about it, though.

[Movin]

My front and rear beam and bar are stock for off road traction.
My lower control arms are 1 inch longer than stock. My springs
are 14 inch. mk II struts all around control off road chatters
and whoopies way better.

[Bert]

May be I'm to be accused of being an idiot but my car (all 3 of them) are horribly mushy suspension-wise and feel like they corner on the doors. The switch to Aspire brakes and suspension (plus Aspire sway bar) on one of them was a complete miracle for remaining rigid and upright. I do not have one single complaint about this modification.
Now, I don't go running around in the bush nor deliberately trying to smoke the tires, but travelling around corners at high speed has become a definite pleasure.
Install the bar (not a huge undertaking) and see for yourself. Guaranteed you'll never go back.

[BUSTIVA]

I have real coilovers(not sleeves) and my car sits very low, not sure if sways would make much of an impact on my car, it already feels like its on rails and has no body roll lol! But I will be doing the rear beam rod mod to see if it does anything before going for a front sway bar.

[Christ]

You're better off installing a rear anti-sway and sticking with the stock one. This will keep the rear from rolling, and plant more weight on the front of the car, keeping more traction on the inside front (important) tire during cornering.

If you're not weighing down the front end and having serious roll-control issues, I wouldn't worry too much about the Aspire front sway. If your front end feels a bit squirrel-ish, try upgrading your bushings first. Soft bushings will cause tracking issues that a sway bar upgrade might resolve, but the sway bar upgrade also brings it's own deficiencies into the mix, as noted above.

Slightly heavier front springs and struts, as well as a lower tie bar will keep you tracking straighter through curves without affecting your car's ability to plant the front tires during maneuvers.

This is part of the reason that many auto-x drivers either don't run front sways, or run stock/weak ones, and opt to stiffen the rear instead. It still controls roll, but allows the front suspension to work independently on each side.

Anti-sway bars (one of the first names for them) weren't designed to control body roll, they were designed to stop "swaying" at speed or under high loads, wherein cars would "freak out" and not maintain a straight line of travel without constant user input.

[Bert]

I can see merit in some of these arguments but that isn't going to sway me one bit!
Also the business of soft vs hard bushings I find confusing. If hard bushings are more desirable then the logical extension of that thinking would be to replace bushings (where the sway bar attaches to the front frame) with solid metal in the shape of the bracket and that was welded to the bar. No give at all.
I think we all agree that stock Festys have horrible cornering ability and lousy wind-bucking characteristics on the highway. Sure, stiffer springs and shocks will help but then you wind up feeling every cigarette butt on the road.
Most obvious and visible benefit of swapping-in Aspire brakes and wheels is that the wheelbase (from side to side) increases by about inch and a half. This in itself is a significant improvement over stock.
I'll take a picture of stock vs Aspire-swap and post it shortly.

[Bert]

Stock Festy with steel wheels on the left and Aspire-swapped Festy with 155/65-14s on Kia Rio wheels on right.
No tricks or wheel spacers to widen the track.

[Festiva_Fred]

I've always put a aspire front bar on my festy's, felt like a improvement to me and bumps and ruts in the road are tolerable. I live in MO so the roads aren't the greatest :p

[Movin]

I wouldn't mind an Aspire sway bar if I could devise a sleeve near the lower
radiator hose that would lock and unlock the sway bar effect without weakening
the suspension action of the bar. I was thinking of something like the hub
unit in the front axle of dodge 4x4s. Splines on the bar ends with a hub, fork
and actuator to kick it in or out. Maybe cable operated to save weight and complexity.
We don't have curves around here, look at a map!! The speed limits do not
let us approach body roll, but the wind off the lake sometimes does!

[Bert]

I have to admit the Aspire bar is very close to (or maybe even touches) the transmission mount on the crossmember and also required you to shorten the lower rad hose to clear. Apparently some folks install the bar upside down but I would like to hear more about this before I try it myself. It would seem to me the angle of the sway bar going through the LCAs then becomes kind of odd.
It is not a monumental undertaking to swap sway bars. I would love to hear of someone's proper testing of one via repeating the same courses with and without.

[Advancedynamix]

It's a bandaid for improper spring/valving rates. The stock struts are horribly under dampened, even for the stock spring rate. With proper dampening and spring rate the front bar causes a loss in traction earlier on the inside front wheel under acceleration. This is consistent with most fwd cars. If a bar must be used on the front of a FWD car, it should be combined with a friction plate style lsd (torsen where available). It's not noticeable on cars with minimal HP, but when you increase the TQ being put to the ground it is easy to feel the difference. Front sway bars can also cause traction issues in a straight line, as they limit the independent movement of the front suspension from side to side. Ideally, the Festiva could benefit tremendously from a setup like the kia Rio has. This setup is similar to the festiva/aspire design except it uses trailing bars to support the control arms rather than the swaybar. The swaybar is then a separate piece. This would allow a festiva to have no swaybar at all in the front.
Manufacturers use swaybars because it allows the car to be more comfortable over a wider variety of terrain, and it's cheaper than a pair of properly tuned shock absorbers. Plus, if Mazda had tuned the spring rates and valving properly on a festiva it would have outhandled both the MX5 and RX7 models of the same time period. They couldn't risk that now could they.

[BUSTIVA]

I've often thought about eliminating the sway bar all together and fabing up some traction bars in its place, similar to the sketch and pictures below. I would assume this would work well with my coilover setup, and may be the secret to a 11sec pass.



The festiva setup

[Advancedynamix]

Yeah, that's a good idea. Make a reinforced removable lower core support with those trailing (drag) links. Or use the links from a Rio. The rubber bushing is actually better for traction than spherical bearings anyway, unless your running wrinkle walls.