Quote Originally Posted by Mark Rinker View Post
Still seems odd to me that if you have a steel bar, with a finite range of twist (i.e. it can't be wound up like a watch spring) and you increase pre-load, that you don't decrease suspension travel, with the lessened degrees of deflection left in the material.
That's just it, a steel torsion bar is just like a watch spring. The amount of deflection is proportional to the torque applied. There is no theoretical limit to the amount of deflection you can get out of either one (more force = more deflection), and as long as you stay within their elastic limits they will spring back to their original shapes once the loads are removed.