Trusting my ears and refusing the bar (chord)

Most the the guitars I learned on were nylon stringed "classical" guitars.  You usually find them a lot because they were cheaper than a steel stringed acoustic guitars.  (Which leads to girls shrugging their shoulders and learning a few chords and boys stripping out the nylons for steel strings which will destroy the instrument.)  The nylon strings are easier to play and are thicker so are more forgiving.  

Now I practice on a steel stringed acoustic and I'm using an electronic tuner to keep it accurate.  My ears are bad and I have a hard time trusting them.  So I find myself constantly checking the tuning.  Yet, even when it's in tune I kept hearing something off.  It wasn't until I started sowly strumming each chord slowly that I realiv3ed my fingers weren't placed properly and I was muting some of the strings.  Changing my hand position helped... excepted with the dreaded bar chords. 

With a bar chord the pointer finger is pressed hard against all 6 strings and the rest of the fingers form the body of the chord.  This makes lots of chords possible with just a few changes in the fingerings.  But I couldn't get a proper bar.  With the thicker nylon strings I could, but not with the thinner and harder to play steel strings. 

I'll keep working on it but for the time being I'm refusing to play the full chord.  By refusing the bar I can get a partial chord with the top strings and not playing the test.  This gives me a meater sounds since I'm basically playing power chords.  So my folks songs sounds sort of heavy metal.