The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area The HiPo Shop I am thinking about putting a rear antiroll bar

on my 1954 3100 with a Nova rear axle what effect will have it on the ride quality? BTW it is somewhat lowered.

Duriung my sports car racing days, we would change the diameter (stiffness) of the front and rear antiroll bars to adjust the handling in turns. It's possible to change from understeer to neutral handling to oversteer by tinkering with bar diameter. Adding a bar when one was not there before will certainly affect the handling, but there's not much way to predict what will happen without some skid pad testing. Ride height, spring rates, Ackerman, roll center, roll couple, and a bunch of other engineering calculations could probably get into the mix.
Jerry

Please tell me you have a front sway bar already.... wouldn't adding a rear without a front bar increase understeer dramatically?

Jerry, What type of Sports Cars were you racing?

I added a front sway bar to my truck and it made a dramatic difference when cornering. Adding just the rear can be tricky. Dad added rear only to our 9 passenger '65 wagon. By the time we made it to grandma's house, he had enough. On the way home, the bar was inside, riding on the floor board. As the wagon swayed around with 7 kids & two adults and luggage, it would try and steer itself. I never understood why they do that, but I never have tried just a rear bar on anything since.

Joe

I pulled the rear sway bar off of a Nissan Xterra when I pulled the rear axle for my '50, and was thinking about using it on the front of my '50.
An Xterra is an SUV and has plenty of weight at the rear of the vehicle. A 3100 pickup does not have much weight in the back, so there would not seem to me to be much in the way of excess sway back there requiring a sway bar.
Carl

MGA, Alfa Romeo, Jag XK-140, TR-3, TR-4, Morgan +4, Sunbeam Tiger, Datsun 1600, Datsun 240-Z, and a few others. I broke a Mazda RX-2 in half during a hill climb on Okinawa in 1972 and broke my neck. I built a 289 Ford engine for an Okinawa Sports Car Club Sunbeam Tiger that ran in the 1973 Macau Grand Prix after I went back to the states.
Jerry

Gracious, Their all great Sports Cart. I owned a Alfa the Boat tail one. Several TR4A. And a MG Midget One day I was skipping Church walking around Savannah. Their in a Garage sat a Jag a XK-150. It was wonderful so I ask the operator of the Garage. What's the story? He said it was For Sale for the storage cost of $500. So I ask My Parents... I still can't believe that one got away. Evey thou I was 15 years old in 1970.

I missed out on an XKE under the same circumstances, with the cylinder head removed by a shade tree tractor mechanic who couldn't figure out how to put it back together, for $300.00. At the time, I was a homeless, starving Viet Nam vet who couldn't buy a job. When I finally scraped up the money the car was gone!
Jerry

to make it ride well you would have to lose 10 pounds and lower the air pressure
in your tires a 1lb

You should never have a rear anti-sway bar without a front one, can be dangerous!
Fit a front bar first, it may be enough for you. Unless you drive a lot of twisty small roads (or do some road racing), I am not sure that adding a rear bar would make much of a difference, really...
As for ride quality, it will not make any difference.