Hmmmm.....I thought chrome on suspension components like sway bars was a bit of a no-no due to the possibility of embrittlement.

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"Show me the Mini!"

The real question, to my mind, is this. Why does a rear anti-roll/sway bar work on a Mini? Why does it reduce understeer?
Minis have good grip at both ends of the car. But, ultimately, like most front drivers, they will ultimately understeer - as the front tyres have to do more than just steer. So, to reduce understeer, you need to change the balance of grip between front and rear. Far and away the best option (if possible) is to increase front grip. On a track, you might do that by improving/increasing tyres at the front, or playing with your geometry. The only way that modifying the rear of the car will improve the balance of a Mini - the grip available at the rear relative to the front - is if you reduce the available grip. Understeer happens because the rears grip harder than the fronts, oversteer if the fronts grip harder than the rears. So, if you have less grip at the rear than standard, it will slide sooner. Thus, you change from an understeering pig to a tail sliding lout - without rwd. This is what a rear sway bar does on a front drive car. I've had other front drivers where the story is the same - understeery pig gets big rear sway bar, suddenly much less understeery.
A Sway Bar's function is really a comfort based thing - it's designed to allow both sides of the car to absorb shock at the same rate, but discourage unequal travel. So a speed bump shouldn't bring a sway bar into play much, but turning a corner - which induces roll, where one side of the car is more loaded than the other - will bring them into play. So, as TinyMorris69 mentioned, sway bars are only really useful if you've got soft suspenion. If your car doesn't roll, you won't use the sway bar. Mini's, especially those with new rubber cones, can have a bit of body roll. And there aren't that many spring options available out there - there were even less back when the sway bar (and to an extent the rear beam axle - usually chosen usually to improve rear footprint on a track, but not as good on the road - there's a reason why most other cars have gone independant all round) were introduced as modifications, so a sway bar was a relatively easy thing to do. Anyone can bend up a bit of steel, not everyone can produce rubber donuts or hydro displacers! Sway bars can have a negative characteristic, in that they limit travel of an unloaded wheel. So you're more likely to get the inside rear off the ground, and thus you're more likely to oversteer, because you've got two tyres at the front to one at the rear, so the one at the rear will lose traction before the two at the front do. This is easy enough to achieve with a standard Mini setup!
I think that a sway bar shouldn't be the first option for changing handling, they should only be used by people with lots of experience, who know their suspension's setup pretty well. Reducing grip should never be your first choice.

I've got one on my new Cooper, but it's been converted to dry. I was looking forward to powdercoating and refitting it as I've never had one on a mini and as a period accessory (well 70's or 80's period accessory at least as that's when it was last driven) but I'm not so sure now...

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SooperDooperMiniCooperExpertEngineering

All garage work involves equal measures of enthusiasm, ingenuity and a fair degree of irresponsibility.

Not failed yet, wasn't on the car last time he saw it.

Tadhg - I actually disagree with a fiar bit of that

"The only way that modifying the rear of the car will improve the balance of a Mini - the grip available at the rear relative to the front - is if you reduce the available grip."
This is based on the (incorrect) assumption that a rear bar does not affect the grip at the front. A rear bar on a FWD car is a very different beast to that on a RWD car. It has a huge affect on the front - load is transferred diagonally across to the opposite front wheel. This keeps it in contact with the road, and as I said above allowed me to get the power down much earlier (otherwise if inside front is unloaded it spins).

"bars are only really useful if you've got soft suspenion"
Again I disagree. My mini is very firm - far to firm for the road actually However the rear bar dramatically improved roll. I have followed some VERY hard cars into fast corners and they still roll noticably (minis and non-mini).

Lots of these discussions end up trying to treat things in isolation. But grip can't be discussed in isolation of traction. People talk about over steer like it's a bad thing, however it allows you to get the car pointing to where you want to go sooner, and that's a GOOD thing.

Sit in any race car (not just mini) and it's a big eye opener just what 'grip' means. It does NOT mean a lack of slide. Watch a good RWD car in a sweeper - the front wheels will be going left to right, not actually pointing where the car is going. Same goes for a FWD car in a corner - the rear will not be in full contact, it will be constantly switching between over and under steer.

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1967 Cooper S - new front bearings to do.
1965 Cooper S shell - Slow progress. No time or money!
1966 Deluxe- next rustoration!
Mk 2 & XJ6 Jags. Less said the better.

I agree with smac, much of Tadhg's logic ignores the fact that the front and rear of the car are connected by the body. The total transfer of load from one side of a car to the other in a corner is a function of the centre of gravity height and the track width. The share of the increase in outside wheel load between front and rears is linked to the roll stiffness at each end and the roll centre height. Adding a rear sway bar will increase rear roll stiffness thereby increasing the share of the load transfer taken by the rear tyre. This decreases the load on the outside front. So the rear does more work and the front less.

When cornering, the front and rear tyres will be roughly at the same slip angle. Since the rears are in-line with the car body, the body will be at the same slip angle as the rears. This makes the car appear to be oversteering to a road-side observer, even if it is actually neutral. To get the car at the angle required early in the corner means making it yaw quite suddenly. Race drivers in front or 4wd cars often use left foot braking or lift-off techniques to achieve this. A car with a rear sway bar will be easier to flick into the correct angle than a plow understeerer. It is not a technique that is used on the road often because getting it wrong can mean existing the road rear-first. I've seen a Peugot 205 Gti leave the road on Mt Glorious at 80 km/h when the driver lifted-off on corner entry. Bent the car in the middle on a tree-stump but didn't fly off the edge of the mountain! Manufacturers dial-in understeer to save us from ourselves.

Fair call Smac and Mokesta.
In terms of Smac and Mokesta's first points, I never noticed any extra front grip after upgrading my rear bar on my FWD car, but then when pushed it chewed more fuel than I could afford at the time, so I never pushed it too hard! So I didn't notice better drive out of a corner. I did notice that the back was less assured with a larger rear bar - particularly on turn in. It tended to skip across bumps, rather than track through them. In terms of extra front grip from a rear bar, I found it doesn't help when you're off the gas. A sway bar does increase roll stiffness, but I'd maintain it's better to stiffen the body before the suspension. And the rear wheel can't take that extra cornering load for you when the car's pitched forward, so it's only effectively improving your balance half the time - when you're on the throttle. The rest of the time it takes it too far the other way, and, as Mokesta pointed out, it's very easy to end up like that 205GTi. Off throttle, I found a bigger rear bar just made the rear more nervous, not the front more secure. Thankfully I didn't have any experiences like AEG163!
In terms of "really useful if you've got soft suspension", I vaguely recall that Citroens and French cars in general were the first to widely adopt sway bars, so that they could maintain soft suspension but get that handling balance they're famous for. You will notice the difference on any car - even F1 has sway bars, and we all know they only use a few mm of travel. But, generally, the harder the springs, the less roll you get, the less you actually use that sway bar. The advantage of a sway bar (on the road) is that it lets you run softer springs while maintaining less roll.
I agree that oversteer's no bad thing - it's one of the greatest things in the world. And I realise that a well setup race car's handling isn't just characterized by good grip, it's also about balance, and that a well setup car is one that can be driven with an economy of steering wheel inputs. Even rally's gone that way now - faster, but less spectacular to watch. My point was more that I'd rather balance the car up by improving the front end grip than anything else. I think that a sway bar should only be something that you look at if you know your car very well, you've already upgraded the rest of the suspension, and your biggest problem was understeer. I guess we should answer the Bad Man's question - yes, they make quite a difference! And, in the right hands/right place, they can be a very good thing. But I just don't think they should be the first port of call. I'd be doing negative camber bottom arms, adjustable tie rods, etc on the front, and camber/castor brackets at the back, playing with the ride height, etc, all before doing a sway bar.
In terms of transferring the load diagonally across the car to improve grip, that's something that would make it interesting to experiment with a hydro system... I'd be interested to see a setup with competition bump stops (or coil-overs with fairly light springs) and with the hydro lines connecting diagonally across the car - similar to the last Audi RS6... I'd try it myself, but unfortunately my car has been converted to dry, so the experiment would take a lot more work now... Maybe one day...

This is becomeing a heated topic

No heat intended from here - just clarifying what I meant, and my experience.

Yup, all good discussion

Your comments about thottle on/off are good - I recently had the chance to complete the Holden advanced driver training (at Manfeild). I'm the first to admit I probably went in there with a little bit of a "I already know this" attitude. Most of what they covered was stuff I knew, but they were able to give the theory behind it, backed up immediately by practical demonstration - good stuff. The best bit (for me) was the importance of weight transfer through a corner. We were taken out as passengers as the instructor threw the car ( commadore) through a slalom. All good (if a little scary for some) then towards the end he lifted off the throttle - the car immediately oversteered and started to get into a tank slapper...chicky in the front seat squealed like....anyway, he put his boot back into it and it came right, even though were now accelerating again.
I tried it in the mini...about a 110kph in a slalom I backed off...rooooouuuund the back comes....thankfully brain overcame reflex and I stuck my foot back up it....came right no problem.
I think that's where a lot of people come un stuck....novice drivers are told to steer out of a skid, yet 9/10 times by the time that novice realises they're in a skid it's too late.

This is all mini related of course....I wouldn't have the nerve to put my astra through that slalom, let alone go fast enough for throttle to make a difference!

Ahhh I'm babbling.....

Thinking through it a bit more, although the other FWD car I had (a plumb ride for a ricer, but I didn't do anything to it) was quick enough to break the fronts free easily (which was fun, but kind of boring compared to hustling a Mini) but the vast majority of the driving I've done in Minis has been in stocko small bores, which didn't have enough to spin the fronts. So traction out of the corners wasn't really much of an issue for me in those Minis!
New Mini does it ok though... Although the last few times it's done that it spun both equally (nice dark lines!). And I had it mostly out of the corner, so there wasn't much roll.
Don't worry Smac, babbling's a common disease...

from what I've been through.
Rear sway bar good for hydro, race or street (I also added front shockies). On a dry car not needed for street (though Dad's GT, with dry, now owned by Bob Ward had one and was OK). Only a race only thing really for LSD dry cars I reckon.