Cornering Better: How to Handle Your Muscle Car

There are a lot of ways to make your muscle car handle better, most of them require you limiting that body roll, and pitch as much as possible. To that I will discuss a few of the ways that I have done it over the years, on my own car, and in the shop.

First let me explain what your trying to control when you make your muscle car handle better. I'm sure that you have seen a car going through a corner at high speeds before, if your turning left, that car body will roll to the right, this is what we are trying to control when we make it handle better.

The first thing that we do is an obvious one, we'll change the shocks out for a better, and stiffer pair of shocks, I usually use gas charged shocks. The best idea for shocks is probably adjustable gas shocks. Yes they will cost you a bit more money, but they are well worth it.

Now for the next step in the evolution of your muscle car's handling, it's all about controlling a few things. One of those things, as I said above is body roll through the corners, above we talked about shocks in the most basic way, the next step is a sway bar set up.

You may not think that a sway bar is worth the money, you mat have noticed that they aren't cheap. Your car may already have a sway bar, so what can you do, increase the size of the sway. Adding a few millimeters in thickness can get you a 50% increase in sway bar stiffness.

If your still not convinced that a sway bar is a good idea, you can make up for it by getting a shock that would double your spring rate. Yes this shock would cost you more money, but you get what you pay for.

A sway bar is designed to attach the right and left side of a car's suspension together, along with attaching them to the frame in the center. Sway bars help to resist body roll by increasing roll stiffness, which results in less body roll.

The front sway bar attaches to the lower control arm on each side of the car, and then to the frame in the middle of the car. The rear sway bar will usually attach to the rear end housing, and to the frame on each side of the car. Yes you do need one in the front and in the rear for them to work right.

It is the torsional stiffness of the bar that stops that body from rolling, the stiffer the bar, the less body roll that you will have. Just moving from a 28MM to 32MM will increase the sway bar stiffness by about 70%.

What an easy upgrade to make you car handle better, when matched with the right shocks it can make a huge difference in how your muscle car carves the corners. It's all up to you, but this is an easy way to get your car performing better, yes it could cost you from $500 - $800 for everything.

In the end it's well worth the money when you car stays on the road better at high speeds. It's amazing to me that some people still have a problem with sway bars. It's no different then most performance upgrades, I guess it just seems to simple for some people, but in life the best things are simple.