110: de-mountable anti-roll bars?

Hi Simon

You obviously spend too much time on the bog!!!

Seriously though, aren't the Anti-roll bars effectively torsion bar springs - as the vehicle rolls, they twist, and the natural spring in the metal reduces the roll. So I would think that cutting them would not be a good idea.

I would have thought that you need a system where the mountings can be freed, perhaps by having them held in place by a hardened pin, which could be removed when more articulation is required.

Having said that, my discovery is fitted with front and rear anti-roll bars, and I have not had any problems with articulation. I think you may just have been unlucky with your speed when the cross axle occurred.

Cheers! Graham Carter Harare Zimbabwe

Hello,

You have to take this with a pinch of salt as I don't actually own a Land Rover that has Active Cornering Enhancement, but my understanding is that it works by adjusting the suspension directly using hydraulic rams rather than simply attatching or detaching an anti-roll bar.

I'd throw in a word of caution about attempting to 'enhance' the anti-roll bars on your Land Rover. Were your enhancements to fail in use, you could find yourself rolling over on the corner that you've been around safely fifty times before. Remember that Land Rover conduct thousands of test hours on suspension and other modifications to their vehicles during their product lifetimes.

--> Greg

On or around Wed, 21 Jan 2004 09:47:53 +0000 (UTC), Simon Birkby enlightened us thusly:

sounds quite likely.

ACE works by having hydraulically activated arms which work in a similar manner to an anti-roll bar, but more so.

On mine, there's only an ARB on the back. dunno if any have 'em on the front as well.

As a first step, I'd try removing the ARB and seeing what that does to the on-road handling. You might (or might not) find it OK without it. The disco has ARB as well, looks much similar to the one on my 110, yet rolls a whole lot more thanks to soft springs I've not, however, removed the ARB from my 110.

if you find the handling OK without the ARB, then you've solved the problem very cheaply.

failing that, you need something like what you describe, a means of decoupling the bar. I'd look at something involving 2 bits of tube and a damned great bolt, meself:

bolt ____| |___________ __|____| |_______ |

Thanks very much Austin - I hadn't thought of doing it like that. It's a neat solution. I think I'll build something like that as 'Prototype 1'

I hadn't come up with any idea of my own that didn't seem unfeasibly tricky to engineer ...

I'm going to go to a dealer and have a look at a real-life ACE system too. Just in case there's a mechanism I can adapt from that without having to sell a kidney to pay for it.

From what I've read, the ACE hydraulic rams work on the ends of something to a lateral ARB, increasing or decreasing preload, per side (independently) as required.

I've seen a related system on an old ('80s)Williams F1 car, where the ARB ends were made of flat spring steel that could be rotated by a control from the cockpit. When the flats were parallel to the track they were at max deflectablity and offered minimum roll resistance to the car. When they were turned perpendicular to the track, they were effectively rigid, for max roll resistance - as dictated by the torsional rigidity of the lateral bar itself.

I think Disco ACE works on the same principal but with the 21st century twist of microprocessor controlled (active) rams acting independently side to side, instead of a two coupled bits of spring steel operated handraulically. I also think it has a quick-release decoupling mechanism but it may just be done electronically by two dump-valves on each ram.

I'll try and take some pictures somehow and post them on my website.

Thanks again

PS - will I owe you any royalty for a > On or around Wed, 21 Jan 2004 09:47:53 +0000 (UTC), Simon Birkby

On or around Thu, 22 Jan 2004 16:47:03 +0000 (UTC), Simon Birkby enlightened us thusly:

better see if it works, first... :-)