Disconnect Roll Bars

Why do you need to disconnect the roll bars when setting corner weights?

Because they will apply a force as the ride height is changed on one corner. In a car you are corner balancing, you will need to have an adjustable drop link for the ANTI-Roll Bar (ARB) so you can dial out any preload that would affect the corner weights.

Hi William,

As David said, it's about "zeroing" the anti-roll bars after you adjust the corner weights. You disconnect them during the process to stop them having any influence on the corner weights. If you didn't, when you make adjustments from side to side, the anti-roll bars will start taking load and artificially affect the weight distribution readings you get.

You disconnect one side at each end, then carry out your corner weighting. Once you're happy, adjust the anti-roll bar connection link length such that there is no force on the link when you reattach it, then reattach the link to the bar. Hope that helps.

As they said, it will affect the 'wedge' if the ARBs and their links aren't correctly fitted and apply lift/drop forces across the axle(s).

A link is disconnected on each ARB, so the springs are theonly thing supporting the vehicle and are properly set, the ARBs are then connected with the links set to neutral so the ARB isn't introducing forces that will be acting in parallel with the springs, which will affect the forces applied through the tyres.

On the other hand, if you have already got 'wedge' and for one reason or other can't adjust the springs, a quick and dirty trick is to use pre-load on the ARB(s) to reduce that - it's something normally strongly avoided, but sometimes one has to do what one needs to get the job done.