Have a '71 with an Elephant front sway bar. After the install, high speed cornering is down right scary. Think of highly overboosted power steering where any input makes the car dart. At normal driving speeds and even taking 20 MPH corners at 40+ is not an issue. I am thinking this may be a good setup for AX, but since I don't do AX it doesn't matter. But when taking a 45 corner at 60 I have to be extremely careful to only put in slow tiny inputs.

Removing the sway bar links to the A arms the issue disappears but the car wallows at speed. The shocks only have 3k miles on them and the rack is fine.

There has to be an adjustment to the drop down links, either lengthen or shorten so that high speed corners are not frightening and the stearing isn't hyper sensitive at speed.

Rick not sure what you have but IIRC the Elephant bar has links with long slots for adjustment. To fine tune simply gradually move the attachment of the links in towards the bar, testing a defined stretch of road each time, until you achinve the "nuetral" handleing you are after.
A pic would help ID

You may also want to consider adding a rear sway bar, to balance out the front bar.

The adjustable drop links are for taking pre-load out of the sway bar when the car is at rest.

Sliding the lower end of the drop link closer to the sway bar will make it firmer, causing the front end to lose grip at the front set too stiff. Sliding the lower end of the drop link away from the sway bar will make it softer, causing the back end of the car to lose grip first if set too loose.

Some 914 front sway bars come with drop links for 911s, which are too long. Perhaps something is bound up.

Click to view attachment

Thanks guys and Mark for the illustration. Mine was set up on full soft (away from the sway bar). Sounds like I may need to move it in a touch and stay away from messing with the drop links. Then try it out and keep tweaking. Sound good?

I have the best xact unit mark posted

So if we move the drop link closer to the bar, does that mean we the preload needs to be adjusted out?

Based on your description in your original post, it sounds like the bar is too stiff even on the softest setting. Making the front bar stiffer (moving the mounting point closer to the bar) will make the oversteer/twitchiness even worse.

The cure is to increase rolling stiffness in the rear. The most common ways to do that on a 914 are stiffer coil springs in the rear and/or adding a rear sway bar. Most people here seem to like stiffer coil springs, but that comes at a cost of increased ride harshness. Personally, I prefer to leave the softer springs and use a rear sway bar.


If you move the links exactly the same amount, you won't change the pre-load. However, since it's difficult to get the links set to exactly the same spot, especially with the front wheels off the ground, you should expect to have to readjust pre-load.

The pre-load should always be adjusted with the car sitting on the ground. If you try to adjust it with the front wheels hanging from jack stands, you'll almost always end up adding pre-load without intending to.

One trick to make adjusting easier is to put the car on ramps, rather than jack stands, and then you can adjust from under the car with it sitting at its normal ride height.

If you have the preload adjusted out and you move both ends the same amount, all you're doing is rotating the bar. I'd still do a check on the preload, just to be sure.

Sounds like the bar is preloaded.

Also be aware that a sway bar can amplify any alignment issues you may have.

You might want to double check your front alignment (or better yet, all 4 corners).

My car handled in a similar way,all over the road,disconnected one front sway bar link to at least get some ride compliance...it was still truly awfull.
Front of the car was very hard to bounce,thought the control arms were seized in the bushes or something,was a bit lost for a while,bit the bullet and purchased new strut inserts and changed them out ...problem solved.
The old Bilsteins had a really horrible feel on compression and were slow and jerky on rebound ,never seen a set of worn inserts like it,normally they just go soft and bouncy .
Might pay the check yours although they are near new.

What rear springs are you running? My cars have front bars and stiffer rear springs and they corner like they're on rails.

Certainly checking/replacing the front bushings makes sense after all these years.

Rear springs are 200lbs with Bilsteins all around. Good question about the inserts. Need to check those out. Good info on setting preload. Much appreciated

The exact setup is Street Track 1.

I'd be checking the alignment like Andy suggested. In my experience that is more likely to cause darting more than sway bar adjustment. Sounds like you may have issues withe toe angle on the front and possibly rear as well.

Did you recently install the Stage 1 kit, or recently change ride height? Lowering will cause the front to move from toe in towards, or even achieve, toe out. Toe out increases initial turn in and could be causing the dirtiness your describing.

Just checked that Bilstein front inserts were included in the build so that probably eliminates that variable.

Mark and Andy, thecar was lowered prior to adding the kit. The car was aligned after the kit was added but it was set to factory specs.

I will take it to an alignment shop which specializes in Porsches and have them go thru the suspension for anything worn and then align and corner balance.

Thanks guys.

Check the aspect of the control arms with regards to being parallel to the ground. Perhaps the front end is too low. Not enough toe in? Do you experience shuddering/shaking going over a set of RR tracks? How stiff are your front torsion bars? Who did the "street track 1" alignment? fordals? For a street car 200# springs seem a bit big.

The alignment was done not done by Fordal's but a local shop that works 90% on Porsches. I was thinking of taking it to either Fordal, TruLine or Cantrell Motorsports. I am leaning toward Cantrell.

Your thoughts?

Epilogue

After removing the drop links I discovered they were of unequal lengths. I threaded them both down so both were equal and of absolute minimum length. Drove the car up my ramps and reinstalled both at full soft with he drop links inboard on the sway bar to really minimize length.

As a result the steering no longer feels like overboosted power steering and I am not experiencing that hyper rebound effect when unloading the suspension exiting a corner. Since the swaybar is now at full soft it is now just a touch better than having it disconnected. I will put the car up on jack stands (914s natural habitat) and increase the drop links length by a couple of threads and see if that sharpens cornering a bit without going back to the original issue. Or do they need to be removed to lengthen?

Dumbass question time: is it better to make the drop links longer or instead move the shortened drop link up the bar they attach to by an inch? Will the result be the same? I understand that doing both will stiffen things but what would be a better way to proceed OR just moving the shortened drop links out board like the illustration above?

Changing the length of the drop links, assuming you don't dial in any preload, will not affect the "strength" of the sway bar. You need to change where the drop links attach on the slots in the arms at the ends of the sway bar (see above pic).

You want to adjust the length of the drop links so that the sway bar arms are approximately level when the car is sitting flat on the ground. And, the drop links should be the same length, so there is no pre-load.

Your drop links should be designed like turnbuckles, so you don't have to remove them to adjust them. One end of the center threaded section should have right-hand thread and the other end should be left-hand threads. Just loosen the lock nuts and then turn the center threaded section to make the links longer or shorter.

Thanks Bill,

Looks like the way I have them now is doing next to nothing since the slotted arms now look like this: \\ I will move them to horizontal and adjust the drop links so there is zero preload.

My new understanding is that drop links are adjustable for initial setup at zero preload and they are left at the initial adjustment but moved up the slotted arms to dial in more preload.

There shouldn't be any preload on the links or bar. You should be able to easily bolt and unbolt the droplinks from the control arm and the swaybar with the car at rest (if you can reach the bolts...)

Moving the arms in the slots doesn't affect 'preload' either. The sway bar works by transferring compression and spring from one side of the car to the other. When links are farther out on the arm wheel, X inches of wheel travel = X degrees of bar rotation. With the links closer in, X inches of wheel travel = X + a lot more degrees of bar rotation. The more bar rotation there is, the more spring/compression transfer there between the two wheels. When there is more spring/compression transfer there is, the 'stiffer' the setting is.

Don't confuse preload with the firmness (or "strength") setting.

Preload is when the sway bar is pushing down on one side and lifting up on the other while the car is sitting still. Sometimes (rarely) there's value in putting preload on the bar, such as for oval-track racing. However, normally, you don't want any preload.

What you want to adjust is the firmness setting. The sway bar is a torsional spring, and the formula for torsional load (aka, torque) is force times distance. Since the "force" of the sway bar is fixed, due to its construction (diameter, length, material, etc.), the only adjustment you have for torque setting is the slots in the arms. Moving the point where the droplinks attach to the arms closer to the sway bar will increase the torque required to move it, and will effectively make the bar stiffer. Moving the links farther from the bar will soften it.

Normally, making a bar stiffer will "transfer" traction to the other end of the car. So, if your car understeers, you either want to make the rear stiffer or the front softer. Conversely, if it oversteers, make the rear softer and/or the front stiffer. However, you should only make one adjustment at a time and then test it. If you make two (or more) adjustments at a time, you won't know which adjustment had which effect, and could end up making the car worse without knowing why or how to fix it.