Anti-Sway Bars vs. Strut / Tie Bars - whats the difference?

[astatik]

my friend told me to get a rear strut-bar because it helps with cornering alot. Is this true?
and what is the difference between anti-sway bars and Strut/Tie bars?

are there any rear strut-bars for our mazda3s that will help with connering?
sorry, i\'m a newbie when it comes to these things.

[Ex-Rolla]

Strut bars are used to reduce chassis flex during HARD cornering. Some say that on our cars, it won\'t really \"help\" the handling, because the struts are placed so close to the firewall. In other words, the whole firewall can act as a strut bar....

I\'ve owned a strut bar on my previous car, and from my experience, it didn\'t help too much. I noticed it when i first installed it, but because the changes were so minimal, i quickly forgot it was there. It was more like a \"mental\" suspension mods... you think it\'s doing something, but really it\'s not... again, this would probably be useful in extremely Hard cornering...

Sway bars/Anti-sway Bars... Read THIS (http://www.hotchkistuning.com/bin/Misc/HollowSwayTech-D.pdf) PDF file... it will explain to you how Sway bars work. to give you a short answer, the sway bars reduce body roll, so the car feels more \"planted\" to the road when turning.

I also installed the front/rear sway bars on my previous car. This is where the handling improvements were extremely noticable. when taking hard corner, the car would not sway one bit (sometimes causing the ass of the car to fish tail slightly).

so... when it comes to modding the suspension, I would start with sway bars.

you can find the more popular Progress rear sway bar HERE (http://www.ptuning.com/html/Item-Desc.cfm?PartNo=PT62.1125&MakeCode=mazda&ModelCode =3&ModelYear=2004-2005%20All&ModelDesc=3)

or you can get front and back from eibach (http://eibach.com/cgi-bin/htmlos.exe/001125.2.7441196630700002334) part number 5545.320, not sure where you can get them from.

Ex

[astatik]

thxxx Ex-Rolla
that HELPS ALOT!! :D

[TheProfessor]

Yeah, I had three strut bars on my last car (front upper, rear upper, rear lower) and while I did feel a difference, it was not likely worth the money. I found it interesting that our P5 came with a front upper bar as standard, yet the MZ3 does not....perhaps that\'s as a result of the already mentioned proximity to the firewall. I have never owned/installed sway bars, but a good friend of mine who is a suspension junkie (he has more set\'s of coil-overs and/or shocks & springs than I do shoes) has them on his Accord and it made a huge difference. Mind you that car was not meant to handle amazing out of the box like our 3\'s do, so I would think the change would be slightly less noticable.

[Ex-Rolla]

I sent an email to Ptuning to order the progress bars. Can\'t wait to get them...

I also noticed that they sell Eibach springs, so I figured it wouldn\'t hurt to ask about the Anti-roll bar Kit (front and rear) that eibach makes. I would like to know if they can get them and if so, how much. I will let you know when they respond...

I wouldn\'t mind spending the extra money to get the front and rear. One thing that may discourage me from getting the front sway bar is the amount of work involved in installing it. As per the Mazda 3 Tech data CD, it looks like you would have to bring down the whole subframe to get access to the sway bar... in other words a s***load of work.

Ex