Hi David, what very interesting stuff, although I don't mind admitting I probably understood about 25% of the technical side, however, having recently moved over to a 300 mile old CX, with Nitrons and probably a rear a/r bar, not sure yet as I haven't looked, from a Trad ARP4 and previously 2 CSRs, a 260 and a 200, but what you say echoes my own less expert feelings, in that the standard damping is, I feel a little on the hard side, and I am going to be softening the front first for the same reasons you state.
The rear a/r bar is interesting, I had a Caterham HPC some years ago, which I used to sprint and hillclimb and found the a/r gave snap oversteer, very disconcerting, so I just disconnected one side and the handling after that was perfect, so I'm not really sure if the rear bar is actually necessary? A bit like the 6 speed box on the CSR, in which the ratios were so closely stacked and the 2.3 Duratec so torquey that you only really needed 3 of the 6 gears. I used modified 5 speed type 9 boxes with longer 1st and 2nd ratios on both my CSRs and that was perfect.
