can someone explain the sway bars/end links thing?

 

dont the hotchkis already come with its own endlinks?

 

Hotchkis sways don't come with endlinks, you mount them on the stock ones. Hotchkis said the stock endlinks are good anyway. Stiffening the rear sway bar should reduce understeer/increase oversteer. Right now I have mine at the middle setting and it feels great for dail / spirited driving, however when i want to drift the car or have fun with it on a track I put it on the stiffest setting. This will make the car stick even more if you use track tires or drift easier if you have crappy drift tires.

 

I have mine set to stiffest, and use for daily driving, I think that for the most part is the front sway that makes the biggest difference, the rear is in fact stiffer than the Sport Sway but not as much, I guess this is given in hotchkis spec anyways. I raised my car about half an inch all around, just that little hurt my handling, so I am probably going lower again, once you have great handling, is hard to even downgrade a little.

 

They went and repaved my test track, but so far nothing shocking, ha pardon the pun, impact wise to comfort. The cornering fun of this mod however has me looking for a G-meter to play with.. very nice indeed. You know what vexes me is how they are able to get a 205% increase in stiffness to a supposably sports tuned suspension. My guess is Nissan purposly set the bar low in order to less stress their suspension shooting for higher reliability.

 

Well of course it's not nearly as stiff as it could be, even is the Sport suspension. The car was engineered with comfort in mind as much if not more than ultimate performance. If it were a lot stiffer, it wouldn't appeal to as broad a group of buyers because the ride would suck. It's certainly not a car built for the all out performance factor. It's just one of the many compromises the engineering team has to make to produce a vehicle that meets a certain price point and appeals to the broadest customer spectrum possible. Guys like you and me would gladly pay a few hundred bucks to "fix" it than Susie Soccer Mom would be willing to pay to mod it to make it a more comfortable ride. They know that we will spend our own money after purchase to tune it without event thinking about it, but the average consumer would never dream of spending money to detune a car, they'd just buy another car with a softer ride.

 

I think we need to start a reach out program. I think Susie would be quite comfortable in my G and probaby a hell of a lot more excited. Price point however, yea no doubt she'd rather have a new pair of shoes. I'm having a hell of a time though just getting her to wash her own TL-S.