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Expert
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Location: Valley Forge, Pa. | Now that the suspention is done and tight with the replacement of the gear box, I still would like to get rid of that rolling feeling. Is there an aftermarket ant-sway bar available for my 1960 Suburban? How common were they, that I might try to find a used one? IF I go looking for a used one, what's an average price I would expect to pay?
Thanks again,
Karl. |
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Exner Expert 19,174 posts. Neil passed away 18 Sep 2015. You will be missed, Neil!
Posts: 19146
 
Location: bishop, ca | Karl, I was going to say:
If your car's front stub frame is as wide as the 57-59 DOD/PLY (and/or CHY/DeS/IMP frames), you can have any salvage yard (like Big M
on this site) simply cut-off the sway bar mounting brackets from a donor-car.
Then, you can weld them onto your car's frame and install its sway bar system.
But, I dunno how or what the 1960 sway bar Lower Control Arm brackets are like.
Contact John Fowlie at:
http://www.bigmauto.com/
And he should be able to help you out.
What's nice about a sway bar is that it doesn't contribute any additional harshness to the ride, and yet privides additional handling response,
as needed.
Edited by d500neil 2014-04-25 7:07 PM
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Expert
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Location: Fairfax, Minnesota | Here is an older thread dealing with sway bars. Check out the longvery detailed response near the bottom. If I remember correctly the author recommends adding a rear sway bar first. http://www.forwardlook.net/forums/forums/thread-view.asp?tid=3516&posts=8&highlight=sway%20bar&highlightmode=1#M21794 Sorry about the link not being active- something to do with Mac and Chrome. |
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Expert
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Location: Arizona | Do not add a rear sway bar to a car with no front sway bar, you will get a mess for handling. The general progression is from no sway bars at all to a soft front bar but no rear bar, then to a stiffer front bar with soft rear bar. The basic issue is this.... with no bars the car will badly understeer at the limit (and the limit won't be very high) meaning no matter how much you turn the wheel when taking a curve "fast" the car still just plows to the outside of the curve. Adding only a rear bar makes it oversteer at the limit instead so on the high speed curve you will all of a sudden be zooming to the INSIDE, but only briefly as the rear end will keep coming around and you spin out. With a "normal" front bar you get rid of much of the understeer so you can take turns faster but ultimately, at the limit, it still understeers and the front end pushes out no matter how much you turn the wheel. This understeer is generally thought to be the safe way to design a car at the limit because it don't really sneak up on you and surprise you, you can tell that you are getting less and less steering from turning the wheel at higher speeds and you just sort of plough to the outside of the curve with tires squealing. When you have an oversteering car it's much more likely to switch from 'steering" to an oversteer condition SUDDENLY leading to surprise and loss of control. That's what happened to the early corvairs and some modern day rear engine porches still. Like the car Paul Walker got killed in. To drive an oversteering car at high speed safely you need to be on top of things every second. So to prevent bad things happening you want to make sure the front and rear sway bars are "balanced" for each other and the car so that it doesn't over or understeer at the limit but just slides in controlled fashion to the outside. The racers use the throttle to dance around the balance between over and understeer to slide the car so it's pointing where they want it to point. Too heavy a front bar, with no or too small a rear bar can also cause oversteer as well as working that outside front tire pretty darn hard as it winds up carrying a lot of the weight in the corner. If you don't plan on racing, adding a factory front bar is a nice way to tighten up the handling. The car will still understeer but at higher speeds then before so "normal" speeds feel so much better. |
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is there an aftermarket sway bar or are used ones around?
