E30 Sway Bar Setup and Adjustment Guide

Adjustable sway bars allow you to increase or decrease oversteer and understeer to fine-tune your E30 to your driving style, but they can also completely ruin a vehicle's handling characteristics when improperly set up and cause premature failure of the end links. Garagistic sway bars have a wide range of adjustments when paired with the correct adjustable end links we provide for your E30's setup. We're going to go over some of the fundamentals of sway bar tuning and touch on some basic info to get your vehicle behaving the way you want.

Initial Setup

To do this right and with minimal headache, you will want to have your car on a level surface and all 4 corners elevated on ramps to give you access to the end links and maintain load on the suspension. The goal is for the front sway bar to sit parallel to the ground with the suspension loaded. We will call this the neutral position.

Neutral Too High Too Low

Neutral

Plenty of clearance in either direction for suspension travel and exhaust components
Force is applied to the sway bar in the optimal direction to prevent excessive wear on components and premature failure of end links
Optimal sway bar performance

Too High

Common on excessively lowered cars running control arm mounted end links
Possibility of the sway bar interfering with the front subframe when the suspension is under heavy load or over bumps
High possibility of premature end link failure and abnormal bushing wear
Poor sway bar performance

Too Low

Common on cars with improperly set up strut tube mounted end links
Possibility of the sway bar interfering with 24v swap exhausts and front control arms when the suspension is under heavy load or over bumps
High possibility of premature end link failure and bushing wear as well as major damage to the suspension components
Poor sway bar performance

Your suspension setup will determine what type of end links you should be running. Garagistics adjustable end links used with the factory mounting positions are sufficient for stock or modified setups with lowering springs that provide a 1.5-2 inch drop; this is the typical drop you would get with a set of H&R Race springs. These are included with all of our 22mm, 25mm, and 32mm E30 sway bar kits here.

Lowering the vehicle past this point usually involves coilovers, most of which include a sway bar mount integrated into the shock body or its available as an optional add-on. In this case, you will need a set of our 9" adjustable end links. If you are still using an E30 factory front strut housing with a coilover conversion kit and have lowered the chassis past the point of being able to level the sway bar using the control arm mounted hardware, you must relocate the end link mount to the strut housing and use our longer sway bar end links. This strut mounted end link is the same design the E30 M3 uses. Link to our article on determining where to weld on the end link mounts can be found below to assist you during installation. Our extended end links and any other parts mentioned in this article are linked at the bottom!

Sway Bar Tuning - Full Soft/Middle/Full Stiff

These three mounting points allow you to effectively lengthen or shorten the sway bar for finer tuning. A front sway bar set to full stiff will induce more understeer in the front axle. Setting the front bar to full soft allows the weight to transfer more onto the front tires during corning and increase grip thus increasing oversteer in the rear end. For a baseline, use the middle settings and test and adjust as necessary to get your desired performance suitable for your driving style.

Simple Adjustments and Effects

Component	Increase Understeer	Increase Oversteer
Front Tire Pressure	Lower Pressure	Higher Pressure
Rear Tire Pressure	Higher Pressure	Lower Pressure
Front Tire Width	Smaller Width	Larger Width
Rear Tire Width	Larger Width	Smaller Width
Front Camber	More Positive	More Negative
Rear Camber	More Negative	More Positive
Front Springs	Stiffer Springs	Softer Springs
Rear Springs	Softer Springs	Stiffer Springs
Front Sway Bar	Stiffer Setting	Softer Setting
Rear Sway Bar	Softer Setting	Stiffer Setting