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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