How do I know if my sway bar links are sound?
Until recently, truck owners had only a few options when it came to their suspension: leave it stock and suffer through sloppy handling and body roll reminiscent of a rowboat during high seas, slam the truck with drop springs and get a spine-jarring ride, or use an expensive kit that providesControl of body roll and improve traction with aftermarket sway bars is an easy way to improve handling and overall drivability.
Most trucks rolled off the showroom floor with very small-diameter bars that kept suspension geometry in check, but didn't do much to improve ride quality, despite the fact that nearly every truck produced in the last 75 years came equipped with at least one sway bar from the factory.
Thanks to hollow tube technology, aftermarket sway bar technology has improved dramatically in the last decade.The sway bars used to be made from heavy solid bar stock.The lighter tubular sway bars have the twist resistance of solid bars with a fraction of the weight.Lighter, more efficient sway bar packages are standard equipment on new vehicles.
The key to understanding sway bars in a classic truck is that they are made in the USA and will provide more handling improvement and fun than nearly anything else you can do to your truck, and most kits can be installed with hand tools within a few hours.
Almost all trucks new and old come from the factory with significant understeer as a safety precaution.When you enter a turn at a high rate of speed and front tires howl, understeer is what happens.The vehicle goes straight if the rear tires are overpowering the front tires.
"Oversteer" is when the front tires stick and the vehicles turns into the corner while the rear tires lose traction and then the vehicle tries to go around the perimeter of the turn.For more aggressive driving, an experienced hot shoe can control this with the throttle.
Sway bars can be used to adjust driving dynamics by transferring weight to different corners of the suspension as the vehicle navigates a corner.Adding a rear sway bar when there isn't one from the factory can make a system designed to understeer either neutral or oversteer.
Load transfer from a vehicle to the outside of a turn is referred to as body roll.When a vehicle is fitted with a suspension package, it works to keep the tires in contact with the road, providing grip for the driver to control the vehicle's direction.The suspension allows the vehicle body to lean in the direction of the perceived force acting on the car.The suspension was designed to address body roll.
The body roll of the vehicle is not bad.The frame of the vehicle should be parallel to the ground to maximize tire contact patch.Finding a balance that keeps the suspension geometry working correctly and the body parallel to the ground is the key to maintaining a comfortable ride.
Why don't you change your antiroll bars from the stock ones?It's pretty simple.Enthusiasts demand more from their cars than the average driver.Improved handling, increased high-speed stability, and better traction are what they need.Antiroll bars are designed to give a car, truck, or SUV optimum handling potential.During testing, the optimum handling balance can be achieved by changing the roll couple.
The factory setup on a performance vehicle is neutral to slight understeer, but it depends on the application and vehicle.The average person wants a car that suits their needs the most.They will create more dissatisfied customers if they install larger antiroll bars, stiffer springs, and lower the car.They offer a decent, if not mediocre, car to raise customer satisfaction ratings.There is room for increases in the suspension's performance using aftermarket parts.
Sway bars help reduce roll and improve handling.They connect one side of the suspension to the other with points on the lower A-arms and frame to limit the roll.The body roll force is created when the truck enters a corner.The force is limited by the sway of the bar.The body roll is counteracted by the stiffening of the sway bar.Excess pressure on the tire is caused by too much sway bar stiffness.Sway bar stiffness is calculated by the force required to twist one end versus the other.
Sway bars work by twisting motion.The material in the center of a bar doesn't have a big impact on the resistance of the force.hollow bars move the center material to the outside of the tube where it is most effective.This produces a sway bar that is lighter in weight and more stiff than solid.A hollow bar is equivalent to a solid.The bar is 6 percent stiffer and 43 percent lighter than the solid.
Most trucks have a front sway bar.The best tires back then were skinny.People are running modern tires.The tires are much better than yesterday's race tires.A neutral handling balance will allow your truck to be the fastest and most comfortable around a corner.When the car is balanced with the front and rear tires doing equal work, it is possible to achieve this.The handling balance is changed with the help of the front and rear sway bars.When talking to suspension designers at Hotchkis Performance, they said they typically engineer the largest front sway bar possible that doesn't overpower the front suspension and then tune it with an adjusted rear swaybar.
Some people recommend running a stiff rear spring combination.The need for a rear sway bar is eliminated with the use of the heavy spring rate.Most truck owners know that a stiff rear spring and an unloaded bed can be brutal on long hauls, so this is fine if the passengers wear kidneys belts and interior rattles are not a problem.The rest of us want a good ride.The optimum handling balance can be created by adding a rear sway bar.The rear spring rate can be softer for better ride quality and corner exit traction because the sway bar is controlling the rear body roll.
To make the truck handle well and remain balanced, the front and rear sway bars must be adjusted to work together.Well-designed sway packages offer balanced handling and can be adjusted to suit the driver's preference.The endlink can be positioned in multiple locations with the help of holes in the sway bar end.Due to the endlink mounting location, companies like Hotchkis Performance often design the rear sway bar to be between a two- and four-hole difference.The adjustment holes give the driver a tuning advantage.
Various methods have been used to make a sway bar.The traditional method of making a bar is to take the raw bar stock, bend it into a shape you want, and use a press and bend dies.This is a cheap way to make them, but there are drawbacks to it.The first problem is that each bend is done separately.The tolerance increases with each bend.Making the part is inaccuracy.Human error can be increased in production.The sways of the bar tighten as trucks become more complex.The part needs to be more accurate to fit in the car because there is less room for error.The press bends can add marks to the product.Dents are acceptable on a solid bar, but they make the part less pleasing to look at.It is not possible to bend tubular material in this traditional way.When bending the material, the press can crack the tubing.