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peschwartz69

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I took delivery of my 2013 Accord EX-L with Navi in late July. I am coming from a 2009 BMW 3 series which unfortunately was totaled in an accident. I decided to get the Accord for all the reasons why it is such a good seller. I basically liked the car except for its light feel and and some body roll. After reading threads on this forum, I decided to order the 22mm anti-roll bar from Progress Technology. I had it installed by a local mechanic and unfortunately, I do not like it. It has reduced body roll but it has made the ride very harsh! I can feel every bump in the road and the rear end feels somewhat unstable. I will try living with it for a few more days and I will probably put the stock bar back on. This will require drilling out the holes on the ends of the stock bar to accommodate the larger bolts that came with the Progress bar. I do not know if I can return the bar to Progress; I guess that I learned a lesson from this, the engineers knew what they were doing when they designed the components for the car. If I wanted a car that handled like a BMW, I should have bought another BMW.
 
I took delivery of my 2013 Accord EX-L with Navi in late July. I am coming from a 2009 BMW 3 series which unfortunately was totaled in an accident. I decided to get the Accord for all the reasons why it is such a good seller. I basically liked the car except for its light feel and and some body roll. After reading threads on this forum, I decided to order the 22mm anti-roll bar from Progress Technology. I had it installed by a local mechanic and unfortunately, I do not like it. It has reduced body roll but it has made the ride very harsh! I can feel every bump in the road and the rear end feels somewhat unstable. I will try living with it for a few more days and I will probably put the stock bar back on. This will require drilling out the holes on the ends of the stock bar to accommodate the larger bolts that came with the Progress bar. I do not know if I can return the bar to Progress; I guess that I learned a lesson from this, the engineers knew what they were doing when they designed the components for the car. If I wanted a car that handled like a BMW, I should have bought another BMW.
Fooling around with the suspension is asking for trouble. Today's cars have computer controlled everything and changing the hardware will negate the software.
 
Fooling around with the suspension is asking for trouble. Today's cars have computer controlled everything and changing the hardware will negate the software.
Please explain. I fail to see how changing the suspension (especially something as benign as a sway bar) will impact software. I've lowered and/or put on aftermarket sways on a number of vehicles over the years, and other than changing the handling characteristics (or needing an alignment after lowering the car), there's been zero impact on anything that's computer controlled.
 
Please explain. I fail to see how changing the suspension (especially something as benign as a sway bar) will impact software. I've lowered and/or put on aftermarket sways on a number of vehicles over the years, and other than changing the handling characteristics (or needing an alignment after lowering the car), there's been zero impact on anything that's computer controlled.
The car has traction control which uses the anti-lock brake computer to brake the appropriate wheel to aid in traction on slippery pavement and in cornering. I have no idea if stiffing the sway bar or lowering the suspension will affect the traction control system. Another point is changing the suspension geometry will affect cornering and braking regardless of the traction control system.

Honda engineers have designed the car as a compromise between handling and safety under various road conditions. If you think you can improve on their design then go for it. However, you don't know what unintended consequences may pop up as a result when your car is going out of control.
 
I have the Progressive RSB on my Accord as well and until I put on coilovers and lowered my car, I didn't feel anything that made an effect on ride quality.
This.

I was one of the first to put the Progress bar on this forum. Been very happy with it since!:banana:
 
The Progress sway bar has 2 settings. If you haven't checked already, you might see if it was installed with the stiffest setting. If so, you might want to reset it to the soft setting.
 
You put a large rear sway and left the small front one. That's a no-no

Of course the car is unstable. The rear end is tight while the front is still flexing
 
(...) After reading threads on this forum, I decided to order the 22mm anti-roll bar from Progress Technology. I had it installed by a local mechanic and unfortunately, I do not like it. It has reduced body roll but it has made the ride very harsh! I can feel every bump in the road and the rear end feels somewhat unstable. I will try living with it for a few more days and I will probably put the stock bar back on.(...).
The Progress bar has polyurethane bushings. Before throwing-in the towel, try to find some rubber bushings and see if that doesn't help.
The Progress 22mm bar was actually designed for the Acura TSX and probably is not a good match for the Accord's front bar.
 
The Progress bar has polyurethane bushings. Before throwing-in the towel, try to find some rubber bushings and see if that doesn't help.
The Progress 22mm bar was actually designed for the Acura TSX and probably is not a good match for the Accord's front bar.
This^

The OP needs to upgrade the front bar to the V6's thicker front bar to compensate with the larger rear.

The OP should have gone with the 20mm TL-AWD bar like most of us. NO noise here, no issues whatsoever with the 20mm bar.

You can't just go buy a part not meant for an application, slap it on, and expect it to work. You need to do your homework.

The 16mm front bar is not up to the task and is what is making your car feel unstable.

The TSX had a 25mm front bar.

The V6 front bar is 19mm which is not 25mm, but it is in a 1:1 motion ratio therefore it does make a big impact.

19mm front bar + 20mm rear bar = good balance without any penalty to ride quality.

It's not that the engineers knew what they were doing, it's you not knowing what you are doing.

Going with the bigger is better mentality will kick you in the butt.
 
Discussion starter · #11 ·
roll bars

This^

The OP needs to upgrade the front bar to the V6's thicker front bar to compensate with the larger rear.

The OP should have gone with the 20mm TL-AWD bar like most of us. NO noise here, no issues whatsoever with the 20mm bar.

You can't just go buy a part not meant for an application, slap it on, and expect it to work. You need to do your homework.

The 16mm front bar is not up to the task and is what is making your car feel unstable.

The TSX had a 25mm front bar.

The V6 front bar is 19mm which is not 25mm, but it is in a 1:1 motion ratio therefore it does make a big impact.

19mm front bar + 20mm rear bar = good balance without any penalty to ride quality.

It's not that the engineers knew what they were doing, it's you not knowing what you are doing.

Going with the bigger is better mentality will kick you in the butt.
I'm looking for info here....not to get scolded! Do you think that going to a larger front bar will really help or am I getting deeper into a mistake?
 
I'm looking for info here....not to get scolded! Do you think that going to a larger front bar will really help or am I getting deeper into a mistake?
Sorry. Yes and No. Some people have different opinions on what is considered harsh. Typically larger bars will increase stiffness therefore increase harshness. In my case, 19mm V6 front bar + 20mm TL-AWD rear bar, I did not feel any increase in harshness at all. ZERO, NADA.

While the V6 front bar will help balance out your car, thus relieving the unstable feeling, the feeling that the rear is going to step out.
However like I said above, it theoretically can cause more harshness due to the nature of a thicker/stiffer bar.

The first thing you need to do though, is to make sure your rear bar is on the soft setting. Before you take it out, at least try that.
Next thing you can try is, like someone mentioned above, changing the rear bushings out to a rubber bushing.

Right now your front bar is 16mm and your rear is 22mm. That is a huge difference and is not a good thing.

Our cars are setup from the factory with understeer in mind with larger front sway bars than the rear. Changing the setup to a larger bar in the rear will induce the opposite, oversteer.
When there is too much of a negative difference between the front and rear, oversteer will more likely happen which can be dangerous especially on slippery road conditions.

You need to fix your car the sake of safety more so than comfort.
 
Our cars are setup from the factory with understeer in mind with larger front sway bars than the rear.
l agree with everything you just posted except this. The rather large degree of understeer characteristic of our cars is the result of more than 60% of the vehicle weight resting on the front tires, itself a byproduct of placing the motor ahead of the front wheels. Unfortunately no combination of bars is going to improve this without inducing some very undesirable handling quirks.
 
l agree with everything you just posted except this. The rather large degree of understeer characteristic of our cars is the result of more than 60% of the vehicle weight resting on the front tires, itself a byproduct of placing the motor ahead of the front wheels. Unfortunately no combination of bars is going to improve this without inducing some very undesirable handling quirks.
I disagree somewhat. Yes the weight distribution contributes to the understeer characteristic, but so does the combination of bars.

With the setup I am running as well as a few others, 19mm front, 20mm rear, the handling is very neutral. This combination just works.
 
You put a large rear sway and left the small front one. That's a no-no

Of course the car is unstable. The rear end is tight while the front is still flexing

Acually, on FWD cars, the rear sway bar matter more. I installed sway bars on my civic, and fit.. always had great results, and felt like best money spent.

I was gonna order a swaybar for my accord, but after reading this thread, i'm not sure now, but the accord does body roll wayyy too much!
 
The key here is balance, a slightly thicker RSB will help to less the lean in corners, overdoing it with too thick of a RSB will make the car more likely to oversteer near the limit of adhesion of the car, including factors such as tires, shocks, springs, driver skill and road condition.

You'll find most people go with only a slightly greater RSB, or go with the combination FSB and RSB from a proven platform, on the 7th Gen it was the TL-S and on the 8th Gen it has been the new TSX or TL-AWD. I'm not fully familiar with the 8th/9th Gen, so it's best that you check the results of those who have done it for their first-person experience.
 
I disagree somewhat. Yes the weight distribution contributes to the understeer characteristic, but so does the combination of bars.

With the setup I am running as well as a few others, 19mm front, 20mm rear, the handling is very neutral. This combination just works.
It all boils down to the distribution of loads on the tires. Bars can transfer some load, and can be useful for fine tuning, but there's no way to overcome the large load imbalance of an Accord without removing weight from the front and moving it to the rear.

A BMW driving friend of mine told me that BMW put a 70 lb "noise damping pad" in one of their cars for just this purpose; perhaps it helped with the noise as well. The battery in a Miata (whose motor is behind the front wheels) is in the trunk, again to bring the car closer to that magic 50/50 weight distribution.

Honda hasn't taken similar measures because the Accord is a family sedan and most owners will never really notice.
If your car is neutral it's likely the stiff rear bar has diminished rear grip to the degree it's now just as poor as the front grip.
 
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