[Grant]

So it's like the spacer that the 105 series chassis use, but it goes below the spindle. When you have a car that's really low (like mine) the LCA get's angled way up when the car is just sitting there. If it's that bad at rest, I can only imagine how bad it would be when I'm cornering hard.

As the LCA rises higher and higher, it's bringing the bottom of the wheel in more and more towards the chassis of the car (the upper control arm is doing the same, but to less degree) the end result is a *loss of negative camber going around the turn and toe out at that wheel (the tie-rod is at a high upwards angle too). I think drop spindles should lessen bump steer too, but I'm not so familiar with bump steer. It doesn't seem to as big of a deal for as the roll steer is.

So after doing some reading, it seems like the way to get these 116 cars to grip like glue is to make the spring rates really stiff. What a shame!!

I'd like to think the Alfa suspension is superior to that of a swing axle Bug, but we're taking the same route to get these cars to handle (the bug having swing-arm rear suspensino, that has a terrible camber curve....you lessen this problem by making the spring rates ultra stiff, and lessening your overall suspension travel). If you look around, other cars don't need 28 or 30 mm front sway bars in a performance application...a hot E30 bar is 25mm, hardly larger than a stock verde bar. A medium hot performance bar on the same BMW is aroudn 23mm! I know this also has to do with where the sway bar mounts on the suspension, but bear with me.

I noticed something had to be wrong with the geometry after going to 27.3 mm t-bars and 154 lb/in springs -- the car rolled just about as much as with the stock spring rates! This was after lowering it considerabley, so I thought I messed something up with the suspension, and after taking a guess where the front and rear roll centers were, I can see that I lowered the front RC a ton! That would partially explain why the car rolls so badly. I'm hoping the drop spindles will also lessen the amount my car rolls with the 28mm bars.

The super huge sway bars that these cars run really seem like a band-aid to messed up suspension geometry.