SuperPro Anti-Roll Bars
The anti-roll bar (also called sway bar or stabiliser bar) keeps the tyres in the best possible contact with the road in every situation. During braking, acceleration and cornering the body changes position and with it the wheel angles. The anti-roll bar counteracts this: it reduces body lean, keeps the wheels closer to vertical and spreads load more evenly across the tyres.
What a better anti-roll bar does
- less roll in corners, more direct turn-in and more control;
- more even wheel loads: more grip and a more even tyre wear pattern;
- tunable handling: a stiffer front bar moves the car towards understeer, a stiffer rear bar towards oversteer. The balance between the two axles decides.
Materials and manufacturing
- Hot-formed bars are made from 55Cr3 spring steel, hardened and tempered to the required yield strength, hardness and tensile strength.
- Cold-formed bars are made from XK5160RP spring steel (medium-to-high carbon and chromium) and bent without heat treatment. SuperPro keeps forming temperatures low using induction heating to preserve material properties.
- Three-stage finish: sand blasting, zinc plating and corrosion-resistant paint. Salt spray tests have exceeded 4000 hours without degradation of the surface.
Adjustable sports bars
Adjustable bars have two, three or four adjustment points on the arms. Stiffness can be fine-tuned for road, track or changed setups without swapping the bar.
Hollow bars
For selected vehicles there are hollow bars made from tube (chrome-molybdenum race steel). They are about 30% lighter than comparable solid bars, reducing unsprung mass. Carefully chosen outside diameter and wall thickness give comparable torsional stiffness; SuperPro verifies this in its own test facility.
Polyurethane anti-roll bar bushes
A bar is only as good as its mounting. Worn rubber bushes give way, rattle or let the bar move – the car reacts sluggishly and imprecisely. SuperPro bushes have a knurled bore that reduces friction by up to 75%: the grease stays trapped in the grooves and no re-greasing is required.
Every SuperPro anti-roll bar includes matching bushes, and they are also available separately for standard and other bars. For special cases there are universal anti-roll bar bushes with matching bracket.
When is an upgrade worthwhile?
- The car leans noticeably, pushes wide at the front or responds slowly to steering.
- Rattling, clunking or knocking from the anti-roll bar mounts.
- After lowering or fitting wider tyres.
- You want to tune understeer/oversteer balance deliberately.
Fitting
Use the supplied SuperPro silicone grease and tighten the brackets to the specified torque. General advice is in the fitting guide for polyurethane bushes. Terms around suspension and handling are explained in the glossary.