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For ultimate traction, Nick is completely correct for the Z32 about strut bars. Why? Everything Nick said was pretty much right on as for why. From a road racing, auto-xing and time trialing experience: In an understeering car, it tells you to do the following: Soften the front, stiffen the rear. This, to a sensible extent (remember this is not a linear adjusting process), will increase oversteer tendencies (wont oversteer if you just look at it, lol). This is all done in an attempt to set up a balanced car (neutral is nice). This can be achieved in a variety of ways (keep in mind the notion of relativity): 1. Increase front tire pressures, decrease the rear
2. Increase the front tire width (or track), decrease the rear
3. SOFTEN the front sway bar, stiffen the rear (a little correction :P)
4. softer front springs, stiffer rear springs
5. Increase front camber, decrease rear camber
6. Increase front brake bias, decrease rear These are more common methods to battle understeer since that is what us 300Z people are talking about. Now you've probably noticed that the recurring theme here is "softening the front, and stiffening the rear." With this mentality, it would only make sense to do the same with strut bars. Since strut bars stiffen the region in which they are placed, then it would only be logical if you wanted a more neutral car to only add a rear bar to stiffen the rear and not affect the front with any more rigidity. The reason this works is rooted in vehicle dynamics, namely weight/load transfer. I don't feel like writing out any physics equations to prove it to you (I know I'm right, lol) but I will try to explain lightly thru the concept of shifting weight (dynamic load transfer). If the front is a little softer, then by having that additional flex, under hard cornering, more weight can be shifted onto the *corner* of the car that the majority of load is being placed on. So like you mentioned (just like corner-weighting) the car acts depending on the situation, where to transfer the weight depending on what forces are acting on it in all dimensions. The flex in the front allows the weight transfer to occur more readily and hence less understeer. This amounts to more front traction which will let you go into turns faster, carry more speed and be off at a higher mph. On most courses, this can make major differences in time. Adding the bar to the rear, stiffens the rear. The rear, while very planted, will now flex less, and conversely can swing around a little more readily. To what extent I don't know off the top of my head, but any adjustment in the rear relative to the front is made to make it want to swing around more easily than the front. This is an indirect fix, but it can work very well depending on the level of the condition you are trying to compesate for. With this all said and done, for those of us who are serious about handling (not only in thought, but actually know how to drive), want to keep our front strut bars off and our rear strut bars on! But this is not to say fronts are evil. If you are a drift driver or go nuts on the street then you too may consider deleting your front strut bar if you push too much, haha. If not, stiffening the front on the street gives a nice, crisper turn-in, and makes the car feel like it turns in more quickly (it does to an extent), and gives perhaps a little more road feel since the rigidity given by the strut brace is transmitted back to the driver than absorbed by chassis flex. It really depends on your application and preferences (even including aesthetics of your engine bay). But for handling's sake, it is better to do without one on a Z32 (not to say your Z32 will handle horribly, it wont, they never do that :P). Other cars may be a different story....... I agree 100% that most people don't know and don't have their cars tuned right. However, a major factor in tunage is tuning the driver, and if the driver isn't actively aware of the resulting change then that isn't an ideal setup for them. If a friend's car needed to be setup, I'd rather her have a bit more understeer than oversteer, simply since she isn't versed in handling oversteer situations (which isn't easy, takes a good deal of practice and patience). One caveat to these explanations is that there is fine balance and threshold to adjustments. I presented easier parameters to change, however going nuts and changing to one extreme may be overkill and can overly affect drivability and feel. You can worsen things and most likely wear out things you don't need to do. Cheers,
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