924Board.org

[ricomartinez]

I know someone was trying to find out if it is easy to adapt 944 swaybars to '81 and earlier 924's. Any progress?

Also, I have a 21.5mm front with no rear. Would a 944 16mm rear throw off the balance? Would the 14mm be better? I know I'll need to modify/adapt to get a rear on.

There are some front and rear bars on e-Bay right now.

[924RACR]

The 944 rears fit the later cars ('78 onward) if you have or add rear swaybar mounts.

I'm using the 19mm adjustable 968 M030 rear bar from Paragon. But it's on the racecar, of course, so YMMV.

I suppose that if you found the 16mm to be a bit much, you do have some options to deal with it - either get stiffer springs up front (like the 200 or 250#), or a bigger front bar - the 924-style bar comes in up to 23mm, which is what I have currently. With the 19mm bar I think that (on stock springs and torsion bars) it'd make a nicely-balanced car on the street and track, pretty easy to drift.

Fortunately these cars are excellent at drifting, and while they have a very even weight balance, like the 914 and MR2, they are far more directionally stable than those mid-engine cars, due to the fact that the weight is distributed out at the ends (engine up front, transaxle in the back). They don't rotate as quickly. Thus a novice driver can, with a modest bit of practice, get pretty daring and drive the car sideways.

You could also add stiff front struts/loose rear shocks to compensate for an overly stiff rear swaybar; I recommend running a rear shock with relatively soft rebound damping anyway, as even with 30mm rear torsion bars I find I fight to keep from lifting the inside rear wheel on corner exit. When I unload that inside rear, even with basically stock output engine I light up that tire and waste power. Running my Koni yellow Gas Sport adjustables at full soft pretty much keeps that to a minimum, though.

Can you tell I'm ready for the season to start???

_________________
Vaughan Scott
Webmeister
'79 924 #77 SCCA H Prod racecar
'82 931 Plat. Silver
#25 Hidari Firefly P2 sports prototype

[-nick]

ricomartinez-

i was doing some checking on swaybars a while ago. if you have a 21.5mm front bar then you should be able to swap upto a 23mm bar from an '84-'85.5 944. (possibly also from a 924S or larger bars from a 951- i haven't verified this though).

there was a mid-year change where porsche re-engineered the front swaybar design on the 924. but only post-change 924's and early 944's have the 21.5mm bar (according to my books).

as for the rear-
with a 23mm bar in front the 16mm bar would be fine. with your 21.5mm bar you would probably want the 14mm rear bar. either way, you're not going to notice much of difference between the two on the street. if anything you'll get a little oversteer with the larger rear bar, which doesn't hurt.

i'm looking into fabbing a kit to use to mount late style rear swaybars on early 924's and models without rear bars. the weltmeister kit doesn't fit right, the peices are made of cheap metal, and it's way too expensive for what you get.

i'll drop a post here in a week or so if i can put a better kit together.

or else i have a stock early 18mm rear swaybar (equivalent to a late 14mm bar) that bolts right up with no extra parts if you want it.

you need something on the rear!

regards,
-nick

[ricomartinez]

Oops. Maybe I goofed. I'm not sure if I have the 21 or 21.5mm front swaybar. Guess I'll have to measure next time I'm under. Half a millimeter is a small amount though. Any other telltale signs of older or later bar type?

[-nick]

send me your vin # and i'll see if i can look it up.

regards,
-nick

nickd_bebop@hotmail.com

[ This Message was edited by: -nick on 2002-01-19 04:18 ]