Progress Technologies MX5 FRONT Sway Bar

DESCRIPTION

Progress MX5 anti-roll bars dramatically improve handling. How? They minimize the traction-robbing body "lean" that rolls part of the outside tires off the pavement. Our Sport-tuned Anti-roll MX5 Miata Sway bars replace skinny OEM Miata Sway bars and rubber bushings with larger diameter (stiffer) alloy steel bars and polyurethane bushings.

More roll stiffness means less body "lean", and the tires stay flatter on the pavement (larger contact patches). The result is more grip and added driver control!
-Less body roll means more traction, faster cornering speeds, and increased driver confidence.
-Polyurethane bushings produce crisp response on turn-in. Progress Anti-roll bars are cold-formed in-house using custom-built precision bending equipment. Laser-cut and CNC bar ends are MIG welded in place using a precise fixture for an exact fit that is more durable than alternatives used by some other choices.

Features:
-Size: FRONT 28.5 mm (hollow bar; 6.35mm side-wall) both front and rear slightly stiffer than our Racing Beat choice
-Adjustment Range: Front 3 holes
-All sway bars are powdercoated metallic gray.
-One year limited warranty

Open BOTH ends of the box to find the hardware and instructions!

BRIAN'S APPLICATION NOTES. Comments further below are about front and rear bars, most customers should be upgrading BOTH. The only reason we sell front bar individually is for SCCA Street Class customers limited by the rules to one bar upgrade, and note that for Street class we have to do a lot to fix the balance issue that upgrading just front bar will cause, including running front KONI SPORT soft relative to rear KONI SPORT at full stiff, and stiffer rear bumpstops.

We worked with Progress for more than a year on development, using our own 2012 PRHT as the development car. The resulting bars are a little stiffer than most choices (a little stiffer than our popular Racing Beat sways). My wife just loves the combination in our 2012, the car is wonderfully flat and stable...and a blast to drive on freeway on-ramps and mountain roads! These bars are finished off better than most choices, in some ways that will not be obvious from the little photos. One aspect of the higher quality in these bars is the brackets, which most folks don't give much thought. But in fact the dirty little secret of the sway bar industry is that ALL the data numbers sway bar makers provide are worthless. Why? The bracket and bushing holding the sways to the car have such a massively disproportionate impact on how much sway bar rate the car actually gets that any comparison of bar rates without comparison of details of the brackets and bushing durometers is a joke....and the brackets are not standard brand to brand, nor is the bushing width, durometer, etc. Looking at just duro, we have seen some bars with 60 duro bushings and others with 90, result is this alone can make a 32mm solid bar softer than 25mm solid bar as installed. Because the brackets and bushings are THE critical element in the sway bar actually WORKING for your Miata, the brackets and bushings here are MUCH more stout than the mounting bracket of any other sway bar choice we offer. The Brackets are heavily gusseted so they do not flex, and WIDER to further prevent flex and to give the wider bushings more coverage of the bar. Let's look at a picture of the Front Fully Gusseted and plated Progress MX5 Sway Bar Brackets!

Think about the effect of those WIDER brackets! The result is as if these bars were even stiffer and much more consistent in effect, because the brackets are so much better the bars are effectively higher rate. Also, the extra width in the bracket means less stress for the bushings, which results in more bushing longevity and consistency.

Now let's look at the rear brackets. Many of our other choices supply just a new bushing for the rear that has a bigger hole in it for the bigger bar and you recycle the factory tin brackets. That is a very efficient choice and helps keep cost low, but those thin tin factory rear brackets flex with the thicker bar. Progress supplies rear brackets that are quite a bit more heavy duty than the factory.

Thus, these bars are just a notch more serious than our Racing Beat or Hotchkis or Eibach or any other MX5 Sways we sell. Note that both these bracket decisions make install slightly more involved. The fit of these beefier brackets front and rear is tighter than the stock brackets, and Progress supplies a spacer for the front that lifts the ABS bracket above the sway bar bracket because the bracket is so much wider that it would not otherwise install. These are small prices to pay for the extra stoutness and long term reliability of the installed result.

Watch this front bar in action with local autocrosser Mike Heinitz below: