Front sway bar mounting

[artishard116]

I've been trying to understand the front sway bar (1") mounting point my car came with, and whether it's sturdy enough. I'm familiar with the bad dog mounting method where the bracket wraps around the frame rail, but in my case it looks like it's just moved over slightly from the factory location. About to starting some metal work on the car and wondering if I should cut this off or leave as-is. 

 

 

[jhm]

I personally would not use that.  Would it fail during use?  Depends on a whole host of factors.....what kind of usage, sway bar thickness, spring rates, what kind of tires, etc, etc.  If all your driving is pleasure cruising on the streets, it's probably fine.  If you're building a car for any serious kind of track use, then it's probably not fine.  Don't know why a PO would do that unless the original mounting holes had become rusted out or stripped.

 

There's a technique to strengthen the sway bar mounts by sandwiching the entire frame rail with steel plates and running long bolts all the way through the frame rail (from top to bottom) to provide the mounting points.  You need to run correctly-sized steel tubes through the frame rails to ensure that the long bolts don't crunch the frame rails when tightening.

 

Good luck with it.

[artishard116]

56 minutes ago, jhm said:

I personally would not use that.  Would it fail during use?  Depends on a whole host of factors.....what kind of usage, sway bar thickness, spring rates, what kind of tires, etc, etc.  If all your driving is pleasure cruising on the streets, it's probably fine.  If you're building a car for any serious kind of track use, then it's probably not fine.  Don't know why a PO would do that unless the original mounting holes had become rusted out or stripped.

 

There's a technique to strengthen the sway bar mounts by sandwiching the entire frame rail with steel plates and running long bolts all the way through the frame rail (from top to bottom) to provide the mounting points.  You need to run correctly-sized steel tubes through the frame rails to ensure that the long bolts don't crunch the frame rails when tightening.

 

Good luck with it.

Thanks for the input, I've heard of that method as well. Will look into something better than what's there. 

Edited November 22, 2018 by artishard116

[jhm]

I did it with my front bar, and am much happier with it than I was with the original mounting points embedded in the frame rails. 

 

There's a couple of threads on this technique here on HybridZ.....I think maybe Jon Mortensen did a little write-up on it at one point?  If you search, you should find them.  (Hint:  Google search works better than the website's organic search function....just be sure to include "HybridZ" in your search string.)

 

P.S.  Looking at your pictures again, it appears that those welds don't really have much penetration....so another reason to not use those mounting points.

[JMortensen]

A bolt through the frame rail with a nut on top is not the best, IMO. Better is a plate on top and bottom, or top bottom and side with a tube welded in so that the plates are spaced properly.

I went through a couple of revisions on mine but ended up with plates top and bottom and tubes welded top and bottom and nuts welded to the top and bottom of the tubes. Then I recently flipped the swaybar to the top of the frame rail because I was having issues changing bars with the splitter on. Now I can change the front bar out in a matter of 2 or 3 minutes.