i designed and fabricated the sway bars for my car (which was never designed
to have any). i havent had any problems with them.
the bar should not slip side to side... on my three piece bars there is a
locking collar, but on the one piece bars common on production cars, usually
they side to side is contained by the stiffness of the bent arm part.
the bar must be able to rotate freely in the collars!!! this is very
important! did you lubricate bushings when you installed the bar?
'lightly snugged' bolts are not safe. a bolt makes all its strength as a
fastener from being properly torqued. you need to change the mount so that
you can properly attach it.
metal, once bent, is unlikely to remain unbent. i would look to replace
those parts.
if you want some help with it, i can give you a hand.
james
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jake Hodges" <jake@codeworm.com>
To: <ba-autox@autox.team.net>
Sent: Thursday, May 01, 2003 8:11 AM
Subject: Need new sway bar mount brackets?
> So I got the infamous Saner 1.125 sway bar for the front of my MR2
> Spyder. It's claimed the lives of many a front sway bar mount, and it
> almost got mine!
>
> The bar comes with (in my opinion) flimsy U-shaped metal brackets that
> slide over polyurethane bushings. The bushings stick out about 1/8th of
an
> inch from the bracket before you tighten them down. I've never installed
a
> sway bar before, so while I thought it was bad to have all that extra
> material in there, I just assumed that they had some idea what they were
> doing... There were no instructions with the bar, so I tightened the
bolts
> down snug but not too tight.
>
> My car has been pushing in left hand corners more and more, and at the
> Stockton event it made a few deep, loud popping sounds from the front
> right. Last night I pulled the bar out only to find that the bushings
were
> bound so tight I couldn't physically rotate it with all my (albeit
limited)
> might. The bar had slid all the way over to the driver side of the car so
> that the bend at the passenger side end was up into the bushing. The
metal
> U-shaped bracket on the right side was all bent up, and I had to hammer it
> out to make it approximately the shape it had been originally. Worst of
> all, the very complicated end link on the driver side is bent. I had to
> turn it around to get it to line up with the bar again.
>
> Is it common for a sway bar to be allowed to slip side-to-side?
>
> Does anyone have any experience with fabricating non-crappy sway bar
mounts?
>
> How hard should it be to rotate the bar when the end links are
> disconnected? With the "altered" state of my flimsy U-brackets,
tightening
> the bolts all the way down leads to that same ultra-bad binding
> condition. The bolts are lightly snugged with thread lock to keep them in
> place for this weekend.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Jake
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