Learn How To Build An Adjustable Blade Type Rear Anti Roll Bar (ARB) For Your Lotus Elan.
The installation of a rear Anti Roll Bar can potentially improve the “like on rails” feel of the elan, on the race track, or the road.
ARB’s are nothing new, they’ve been around since 1919, a surprising fact, but the adjustable blade design we would like to share with you is an exclusive design for the lotus elan rear suspension.
A sway bar, anti-roll bar, stabilizer bar, call it what you will, is a special part of an automotive suspension system that helps to reduce the body roll of a vehicle during fast cornering or when driving over irregular road surfaces.
It is not unusual for high performance vehicles to have both front and rear ARB fitted, (Tuned to compliment each other) some also have additional functions such as “adjust the settings on the go”, enabling fine-tuning and custom suspension settings whilst driving.
The Main Functions Of The Rear ARB.
The anti-roll bar provides two main functions:
- The most important function is to reduce body lean or roll. The reduction of body lean is dependent on the total roll stiffness of the vehicle. Increasing the total roll stiffness of a vehicle does not change the steady state of total load (weight) transfer from the inside wheels to the outside wheels, it only reduces body lean. The total lateral load transfer is determined by the CG height and track width.
- The main function of an adjustable anti-roll bar is the ability to fine tune the handling balance of a car for understeer or oversteer behaviour which can be altered by changing the proportion of the total roll stiffness between the front and rear- call it tuning the bar.
The amount of “bar” applied will depend on the road or track conditions, in general, more bar can be applied in dry conditions than in the wet, only trial and error testing will dictate what is correct for your car and your driving/handling preference, there is no single setting that will suit every car or driver.
The Rear Adjustable Blade ARB For The Lotus Elan.
What this DIY ARB project book will reveal to you is an adjustable blade type ARB, which is different to a non adjustable bar, the book outlines how to build something special for your elan.
The writer has enjoyed success with this blade type of bar, which has vastly improved the handling of the S2 elan, and since revealing the project on lotus elan.net, several requests have been made to either provide the build details, or to build and sell ARB conversion kits.
But as you know, we are way to busy building and shipping of CVDS Conversions, so we thought that perhaps a “how to build” manual was the best way to tackle this.
In the beginning, this project was explored basically out of the interest of searching for better handling for the writers S2 elan.
The thought of writing a book about the project was definitely not the initial aim at that stage, but we did take a large number of photographs, and there are many detailed hand drawings as well as descriptive text.
The book and project was reviewed (Pre Publication) by a prominent Australian elan competitor, who has given it the thumbs up.
The ARB project is a doable DIY project for the owner with the mechanical build capabilities and a well equipped home workshop.
The book contains thirty pages of detailed description, drawings, illustrations, and photographs about the build process.
Rear anti roll bars have been fitted to the elan in the past, but most of those studied by the writer were of the non adjustable type, but the blade type ARB we describe is adjustable.
(Settings can be anywhere between Soft-Medium-Hard), achieved by manually rotating the blades an equal amount each side.
Adjustable blade type ARB’s were common on formula race cars, they are now used on nearly all competition race cars, some designs of ARB have adjusting “on the go” feature from the drivers cockpit, we did not want to go down that path due to the expense and design complexities involved.
The ARB design we present to you provides DIY simplicity, low cost, (Providing you do all of the build and fabrication work).
The ARB has proved to be a very effective application of rear suspension anti roll control.
We will mention again that the ARB project will require access to a lathe and a milling machine, fabricating and welding skills are a requirement also. If your skill levels are up to it, this project will be right up your alley.
There is lathe turning and some milling involved if you decide to make your own set of blades, and yes, there is some welding (Acet/Oxy or TIG)… typical of any fabrication project.
Important Note:
The ARB can only be built and installed with the elan body removed from the chassis.
If you are currently in the process of dismantling-rebuilding-restoring, or you plan to rebuild your elan in the near future, then you might want to take the opportunity to include the project on the “To Do List”.
The price of the ebook is only $29.97.
Very affordable when you consider the info and details provided. If you take a look around the web, you wont find details to build a rear adjustable blade ARB for the lotus elan anywhere, not even from the gurus, but this is a pretty cool and trik design from a lotus bloke from down under.
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