Project STurdteen: Installing Progress Sway Bars

by Rathyna Gomer

To run sway bars or to not run sway bars? That is the question. In the drift world, there's been a reoccurring debate if there is any true benefit to running sway bars. Sometimes it comes down to the driver's preference and sort of drift “style” they're aiming to achieve. As the debate continues, we opted to run sway bars. Sensei Kojima tells me there's no other way! If you want to learn more about how to properly setup the suspension of a drift car, here’s Part 3 of the Ultimate Guide to Suspension and Handling.

In this article, I will outline why we decided to run sway bars, what the benefits of running sway bars on a drift car are, along with the awesome feature of the Progress sway bars we specifically chose to put on my s13.

Although there are many viable options for sway bars, Progress has been a proven brand for this specific application. We went with a 27 mm front bar and 25mm semi-custom rear bar.

The standard Progress rear bar is 22mm. We went with a larger than the standard rear bar because our SR20DET engine is relatively low powered for a drift car and we wanted to have more rear roll stiffness able to kill off some side bite while maintaining good forward bite with fairly soft rear springs and shock settings.

These bars are much larger in diameter than stock and made from CNC bent alloy steel for a consistent fit. Included are some Progress polyurethane bushings, which will replace the soft rubber OEM ones.

First things first, let's take out that small diameter, crappy OEM rear sway bar.

Howard takes off the exhaust hanger so that we have room to install the beefier Progress bar.

It is obvious that the Progress bar has a better, stronger design than the OEM bar and is much more robust.

The Progress bar is 25mm in diameter, up from the tiny stock 15mm bar which gives a whopping 670% more roll stiffness on its stiff setting.