Just wondering what all you Hotchkis swaybar owners have the stiffness set to on each bar? The last thread I could find discussing this was back in January, so I wanted to check in and see how people have adjusted them since.

Mine should be coming in soon (been backordered for weeks), and I'm debating which settings I want to start with. I think I'd like to start conservative and maybe go with front-medium and rear-soft. If I then feel the understeer is still too much, I can kick the rear up to medium.

I'll be using Hotchkis springs and Koni shocks along with this setup. The Koni shocks alone are supposed to help with understeer a bit (I think), so I don't want to get too carried away with aggressive swaybar settings initially.

 

That's what I did, Medium front, Soft rear. Just installed last week and I don't have the car back yet. I believe I copied Amy's setup from a previous thread. She'll have to confirm though.

 

Steady state manuver's like holding a corning line will not see shocks effecting understeer or oversteer. Only duing the short period during the initial compression will they effect change, weight transfer control in otherwords. It is possible when pavement condition's worsen that they maintain better tire to road contact. But overall balance is dictated by your spring rates and sway bars are to be use to fine tune this. To that end set your bar's to fine tune the car's behavior so it's allows you to extract the most from the car. You may actually find that you need a little different bar settings in order to get the most from the car. You could start with what is popular, like soft front and med rear and see if you get the behavioral changes you need. If not climb under the car and make the changes required to get it right for you, that is the key and the benefit to adjustable bars.

 

Sways - Med Front, Max Rear.
JICs - 8 front, 4 rear or 4 front, 0 rear (depending on conditions)

 

I'm running:

Front = Med
Rear = Soft

Awaiting RS*R springs... just need to get the damn rear bar to stop rattling against whatever it's hitting - driving me f#$%ing nuts already!

 

med/med

 

Correct. My main concern is making the car too twitchy during the quick back-and-forth maneuvers, such as in chicanes and on a lot of back roads with quick turns. In those cases I do believe the shocks will come into play. In these sorts of quick turn situations, I don't want to car to snap away from me suddenly and get the rear end out. Too little time to react and correct. (On a longer, steady-state turn I find it easier to do little corrections if I start to oversteer a bit.)

I do appreciate the post and the info. I am indeed doing Hotchkis' spring and sway bar combo, which is claimed to be tuned to work together. (Their TVS kit.) Along with the Koni shocks, I think that should be a good handling street setup, with some good sway bars for fine tuning.

 

Looks like you have the same setup I'll be installing. You find the med/med swaybar setup to work best with the TVS kit? I don't want to get too crazy, but I would like to balance things out decently... maybe a tiny bit of understeer.

 

ONe of the mag's did a comparison on the hotchkis settings. They found the med/med to be the best so that's what I went with. They pulled over a G on the skidpad with it. Honestly, I really don't it could be much better especially for a street setup.

 

It was SCC magazine. That's also what I'm basing my info on, but they had a slight different setup. They used:

275 width tires front and rear
stock shocks/springs
Hotchkis swaybars

They set the Hotchkis bars to medium front and back, and said it was very balanced.

I, on the other hand, will have 245/275 tires (and someday 255/275 once these wear out), Hotchkis springs and sways, and Koni shocks. Luckily the Hotchkis spring rates are almost the same as the stock spring rates, so that should make the comparison a little easier.

 

Hotchkis has the right idea by using linear springs, but they do transfer a bit of spring stiffness to the front, RSR springs do not force that tuning choice on you. At least were not talking about the rediculious transfer percentages to the front that some G35 spring makes go with.

Hotchkis 350Z springs (linear springs)
340/330 F+8% R-3%
Transfers +12% roll stiffness to front

RSR 350Z springs (just a wee bit progressive F&R, maybe one coil is progressive, even that I'll debate)
345/417 F+10% R+22%
Transfers +12% roll stiffness to rear

I'm with you on your desire for better shock control, though I don't take so much issue with the oem Z's high speed shock valving even though high speed rebound is one of the things Koni changed. They also told me they went lower on the compression dampning, but all one would have to do to get that back is to run stiffer springs.

 

Yeah, Hotchkis' decision to move some stiffness to the front strikes me as odd. (At least it's not much.) Not sure why they would do that. So you think the RSR springs might be a better choice over the Hotchkis springs?

For what it's worth, I don't mind a small bit of progressive rate since my car is primarily a street car. Sometimes I think people concentrate too much on making their cars track-worthy and neglect the street side of it. I had progressive Neuspeed springs on my previous Audi, and they were fantastic even at the track. I had friends with linear rate springs on their Audis, and I always felt my springs were so much nicer around town, especially when the roads got rough.

From an aesthetic stand point, I do like the Hotchkis springs over the RSR springs, though. The Hotchkis set drops the front a bit less, and the rear a bit more. My car is lower in the front, so this would help flatten it out. (Some of that front rake is due to the use of 245/40 tires in the front. They are smaller in diameter than the stock 225/45 that came with the car. The 255/40 tires I plan to upgrade to are same as stock diameter, so that will help a bit.) Here is a current pic of my car straight from the side:

 

I had terrible understeer during auto-crosses with the stock set-up. Using the Hotchkis bars full hard front and medium rear cured the handling problem and seems to work fine on the street as well. This works with either the stock 18 wheels/tires and my auto-x 245/40R18s (f) and 275/40R18s (r) set-up. There is much easier turn in and the car is a monster around a skid pad.

By the way, setting zero toe in the rear also helps a lot.

 

mid up front and full stiff in the back. Car is very balanced with the stock springs in stalled. I'll have the Hotchkis springs on the car in the next few weeks after we move some cars out of the shop.

 

just received my Hotchkis sway and springs...not install yet but i will go med/med from what i have read on other threads

BTW there was an old thread abouth the rear sway bar moving because ther is no stoppers on the hotchkis sways..

anybody on this thread had this problem....

 

I remember that thread but even if the bar moves in the bushing is that actually a problem ????

 

i don't know.....i suppose somebody at Hotchkis had a good reason to do it that way

i think i'm gonna e-mail the company to ask them why they didn't put stoppers on their sway bar....

if i have an answer i'll post it in this thread

 

i used shaft collars to hold the bar in place. i dont know exactly how much it cost (because i bought the bars and collars used), but i think they are about 40 bucks.
my bars are set med front and soft rear. but i haven't really been able to test them out yet because of worn tires.

 

Somebody already posted a response from Hotchkis about their position on why they didn't put the stop rings on. Don't remember how long ago..maybe a couple of months.

I've got my bars set at F/med, R/soft. I also noticed that the bars had shifted so I put on the stop collars.

 

got my TVS on the car with the sways set at full stiff front and medium out back... car handles beautifully, the tail may kick out a bit if you dont feather the gas out of a turn, but i'd rather have slight oversteer than understeer (from a personal standpoint).

On the other hand my alignment is way out of whack, im waiting to put new wheels and tires on there to see exactly where im gonna like my sway bar settings.

g'luck!