22mm or 24mm rear arb for street use?


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Jan 11, 2010
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Hey guys, basically I have both, an ek9 22mm arb and an asr 24mm one. Have found the asr to make the car a tad bit tail happy. Bought an ek9 bar a while back and still haven't gotten around to fitting it. But before I remove the asr bar off my ek4, just wanted some opinions on which of the two you guys would recommend for street use and the occasional track day. Coilovers are HSD HR Incase you need to know. Cheers guys
 
All depends on your driving style IMO. I like an EK that allows you to "play" with the rear end a bit using the throttle. So I would keep the 24mm if it was me, and you can always balance that oversteer out a bit if you play with some camber and toe settings but I reckon it would be nice to have the option to use the full potential of the 24mm ARB.

I ran a Whiteline 18mm ARB (Largest I could use on my EK4 without subframe reinforcement), on track last time using 888's all round and I can say I would have liked a stiffer rear ARB with the amount of grip the 888's offered, car just felt to safe and neutral for me.
 
I've got ad04's on my Jordan, so going from what you experienced on your track day would be good to keep the 24mm bar. Just thinking about the differences in ride stiffness relative to the ek9 bar
 
The ASR bar, while a LOT stiffer, does give you some adjustability to play with. I found the hard setting too much for road use but the soft setting was OK.
 
Oversteer is nice but you better be sure you NEVER lift off the throttle, not on purpose and not by accident in the form of a reflex cause, on a spot where there is not place for error.
 
_JT said:
Oversteer is nice but you better be sure you NEVER lift off the throttle, not on purpose and not by accident in the form of a reflex cause, on a spot where there is not place for error.
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Really bro? Is that that prone to stepping out?
 
I am not saying it is thát prone (although I do have experience with a DC2 which likes to step out with what I believe is a 22mm swaybar at the rear). I am trying to say that human nature might make you take your foot of the pedal in a reflex if something happens. If you are not able to correct that in a corner that has little to no run-out in any form then you can crash your car. I can image that a car with 24mm will be very tail happy. Which, again, is nice to play with but can cost you your car in a corner if you don't have the skill to react quickly or adequate at all.
 
the difference isn't that huge comparing the 2 swaybars, it's only a matter of fine tuning. The tail happy effect can be adjusted anytime since having coilovers. In my case when going from no rear swaybar to the 24mm asr one, I have to say that it is only for the benefit. If you tune the whole set up right you will have that nice feeling that I need to reduce steering as the rear helps you corner significantly. Sudden reaction will cause oversteer (not snap oversteer though) but you will always know much amount of grip you have. This is the unique feeling you get. Imagine, these days I am running with my toyos 888 again and the rear is very informing even in hot road conditions with little road friction.
 
Yes indeed, 24mm swaybar is 18.9% stiffer than 22mm. Personally I wouldn't call that "fine tuning" but a serious modification of specs. Besides that, why would you add a bigger swaybar and then try to diminish it's effects by softening your dampers? Another besides: softening your dampers might cause the dampingrate to be further off the sweetspot that fits your springs the best.

Mind you, I'm not saying it's worse or better than 22mm. I am just saying, you better have the skills to correct the car in an instant when unexpectedly the car breaks out. Everyone thinks they're a racing car driver. But just think of what you would find yourself if you crashed your car into a barrier or anything else cause your driving skills are ok or even above average but not good enough to correct unexpected break-out in time. By enlarging the swaybar you're making it more tailhappy, maybe adding to the turn-in speed but also making the car trickier to handle. The (through the corner) fastest cars in the world are also the most tricky ones to handle.
 
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Some good info JT. Think I'll hit a track day with the 24 bar to see how I get on
 
Guys, don't get me wrong, but these would be accurate if we would speak for a specific car we know how it handles from factory and then add the dilemma of the 22mm vs the 24mm rear swaybar and then say again about how much stiffer it would be in terms of percentages etc.
Also the same argumentation would still go for the 22mm vs the 15mm swaybar of the ek4! Thus the safest set up would be the stock ek4 rear bar, and especially since having coilovers!

As for snap/sudden oversteer I never experienced something without warning. The car is so informative to such extent that I would consider the stock set up to be way less easy to control (no feeling and flexible movements of the chassis). Of course you need to be focused, but this is the real deal with these set ups.
 
It doesn't matter which car we are talking about, a 24mm swaybar is 18.9% stiffer than a 22mm swaybar ;) Purely has to do with the diameter of the bars. Also, you're talking about arguementation. I am not trying to persuade the topicstarter into doing this or doing that. I'm just saying that you better be sure if you make the car oversteer more, in this case by replacing the swaybar for a thicker one.

And maybe you find oversteer safer; almost all car producers do not agree with you and adjust their car to understeer. Which is easily corrected by letting go of the throttle a bit, while oversteer is harder to correct.
 
saxophonias said:
Guys, don't get me wrong, but these would be accurate if we would speak for a specific car we know how it handles from factory and then add the dilemma of the 22mm vs the 24mm rear swaybar and then say again about how much stiffer it would be in terms of percentages etc.
Also the same argumentation would still go for the 22mm vs the 15mm swaybar of the ek4! Thus the safest set up would be the stock ek4 rear bar, and especially since having coilovers!
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Not at all. There's a metric called 'front load transfer distribution' which is essentially the measure of a cars handling balance, it can be figured out if you know enough details about the suspension. A high percentage is understeer, a low percentage is oversteer and 50% is neutral. The 'sweet spot' for EKs is between 43-46%.

An EK4 is over 57%. An understeering barge by performance car standards, but ultimately safe for Doris to drive to the shops in. The stock EK9 is 43.8%, right on the limit of being a bit too tail happy. Adding 18-19% more rate to the rear with a bigger bar tips it down to around 41%, which is too much for a road car. I had around 42% with my setup and while it was a long way from undriveable, it wouldn't leave much margin for error if you screwed up.

This can be balanced out with harder front springs (common on almost all coilover setups) and to some extent alignment and damping.
 
A bit offtopic, but do you know the percentage for stock JDM 96 and 98 spec DC2?
 
Not off the top of my head, but I can figure it out.

I've got the calculator on my website, but I was messing with the layout last night and made a mess of it. Will get it sorted out later and put the link up.
 
Good info. Does this metric system calculates the weight distribution which can be easily messed up when lowering the car disproportionately? Do you have a link of your website?
Also, the dc2r with 23mm rear bar is more prone to oversteer? But still can we compare like that, cars with different weight and longer chassis etc? Another question, same bars to a hatchback and to a sedan for instance.
 
Yes, takes in weight, weight distribution, track width, roll centers, spring rates, motion ratios and bar dimensions.

You can't really directly compare difference cars, but on things as similar as a DC2 and an EK9 it'll be fine as long as you get the inputs as accurate as possible. Either is going to have some factor of innacuracy because the shape of the front ARB means it's very difficult to get a good measurement for, so really it's best for checking two setups on the same car. The net result might be wrong, but the difference will be the point you are looking at.

I will get the link up later, layout is still a mess from last nights tinkering at the moment.
 
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Nice!Just to mention that I always remember my car (even as a stock ej9) to be prone to oversteer when lifting of, or braking hard at corners and I think this is the case more or less with most civics (eg/ek). The sad thing is that we never had the chance (especially in non right hand drive countries) to see how a stock ek9 handles, only the boring and understeering ek4 was available in my whereabouts.
 
You can get almost any car to oversteer when lifting off, it's not vehicle specific. This figure is the balance at a steady state, most cars are not set up to oversteer here.

Obviously the higher it is, the easier it's going to transition to full oversteer on lift off though.
 
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