Anti-roll bars?
 

Just spotted this thread over on Locostbuilders: http://www.locostbuilders.co.uk/view...php?tid=193813

Has anyone on here put an anti-roll bar into their setup? I'm not expecting to....?!

Difficult subject this depending on your point of view. There are people who say that an anti roll bar is needed because their car has too much body roll through corners, how ever I wonder if they have ever had their car corner weighted to gain the correct spring rates along with matched piston valves, adjustable bump and rebound coilovers? It is often the case that people just don't spend money on the right parts of the suspension and get it set up properly to get the best from what they all ready have.
Coming from racing in Autograss you see people putting a pair of 1000cc bike engines in the back of a mini and spending £200 on coilovers and springs then wonder why they get blown away by a single bike engine with £1000 suspension set up?
It's all very well putting a 200hp+ engine in your Roadster but if all you are going to do is follow the heard with the spring poundage,buy the cheapest coilovers and just go with tracking setup by an MOT station don't complain that it's not the 'drives like it's on rails' car that you thought it would be.
One of the reasons that the Roadster or the Locost does not have an antiroll bar is that the chassis is so sparse at the front that the whole thing twists as it goes over bumps and round corners, if you add an anti roll bar to that how long will the mounts on your 1.5mm walled chassis last?

You have left out the fact that probably not one that is being made is in fact a "Haynes Roadster " but the builders version of what is in the book, and I am inlcined to agree it's a can of worms to add to the car in regard to rates etc.:eek:

Well I have been hooning about most of this summer and the body roll on my car is hardly perceptible so I would say if you have a roadster with an amount of body roll that bothers you then I would check your shocks and springs are the right ones because they won,t be

i had no issues with my setup for road use but when it come to steep hairpins and esses with elevation changes on my hillclimb events its clear the car could benifit form antiroll bars and lighter spring rates to match.
as meny racers have pointed out to me you cant over do spring rates and damping on a light car (unless you want to end up with a ditch finder)
saying that i would never drive this hard or as close to the limit public roads!

photos of my car on the hill mid hairpin show the rear outer stuffed well into the arch yet the car feels fairly leval. even with my lsd i still struggle to get the drive on early enough.

For a roadster that wil spend most of its time on the road, i'd say if you spend some time getting the set up right you won't need them. From recollection Lotus try to use the smallest bars possible on their roadcars..
For a track car adjustable bars are really handy, especially swapping from a dry set up to a wet set up and making tweeks to the under/oversteer balance.

I'd tweak spring rates, front/rear ride heights and damper settings to get a setup I'm happy with for the road, if that still wasn't good enough I'd consider fitting some.

In my understanding, for road use, rollbars keep body roll in check while making you afford much softer springs for better comfort.

From experience, the ride comfort of my roadster increased a lot when I greased the poly bushings. Also, after about 5000 km, it seems that the shocks are quite a bit softer than they used to be on their softest setting.