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Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff from how Stuff works dot com
Speaker 1: where smart happens. Hi, I'm Marshall Brain with today's question,
Speaker 1: how do stabilizer bars work? Stabilizer bars are part of
Speaker 1: your car's suspension system. There's sometimes also called anti sway
Speaker 1: bars or anti roll bars. Their purpose in life is
Speaker 1: to try to keep your car's body from rolling in
Speaker 1: a sharp turn. Think about what happens to a car
Speaker 1: in a sharp turn. If you're inside the car, you
Speaker 1: know that your body gets pulled towards the outside of
Speaker 1: the turn. The same thing is happening to all the
Speaker 1: parts of the car. So the part of the car
Speaker 1: on the outside of the turn gets pushed down towards
Speaker 1: the road, and the part of the car on the
Speaker 1: inside of the turn rises up. In other words, the
Speaker 1: body of the car rolls ten or twenty or thirty
Speaker 1: degrees toward the outside of the turn. If you take
Speaker 1: a turn fast enough, the tires on the inside of
Speaker 1: the turn actually rise off the road and the car
Speaker 1: can flip over if you do it hard enough. Roll
Speaker 1: is bad. It tends to put more weight on the
Speaker 1: outside tires and less weight on the inside tires, reducing traction.
Speaker 1: It also messes up steering. What you would like is
Speaker 1: for the body of the car to remain flat through
Speaker 1: the turn, so that the weight stays distributed evenly on
Speaker 1: all four tires. A stabilizer bar tries to keep the
Speaker 1: car's body flat by moving force from one side of
Speaker 1: the body to the other. To picture how a stabilizer
Speaker 1: bar works, imagine a metal rod that's an inch or
Speaker 1: two in diameter. If your front tires are five to part,
Speaker 1: make that rod about four ft long. Attach the rod
Speaker 1: to the frame of the car in front of the
Speaker 1: front tires, but attach it with bushings in such a
Speaker 1: way that it can rotate. Now, attach arms from the
Speaker 1: rod to the front suspension member on both sides when
Speaker 1: you go into a turn. Now, the front suspension member
Speaker 1: on the outside of the turn gets pushed upwards. The
Speaker 1: arm of the sway bar gets pushed upward, and this
Speaker 1: applies torsion to the rod. The torsion then moves the
Speaker 1: arm on the other end of the rod, and this
Speaker 1: causes the suspension on the other side of the car
Speaker 1: to compress as well. The car's body tends to stay
Speaker 1: flat in the turn. If you don't have a stabilizer bar,
Speaker 1: you tend to have a lot of trouble with body
Speaker 1: roll and a turn. If you have too much stabilizer bar,
Speaker 1: you tend to lose independence between the suspension members on
Speaker 1: both sides of the car. When one wheel hits a bump,
Speaker 1: the stabilizer bar transmits the entire or bumped to the
Speaker 1: other side of the car as well, which is not
Speaker 1: what you want. The ideal is defined a setting that
Speaker 1: reduces body roll but does not hurt the independence of
Speaker 1: the suspension. Do you have any ideas or suggestions for
Speaker 1: this podcast? If so, please send me an email at
Speaker 1: podcast at how stuff works dot com. For more on
Speaker 1: this and thousands of other topics, go to how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com and be sure to check out the
Speaker 1: brain Stuff blog on the how stuffworks dot com home page.
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