I got my AddCo anti-sway bar and urethane bushings from Whitney today.
Lord are they slow.
The bar was in an AddCo box as foretold. It's 1 7/8" thick, it's real
heavy, it's one big honkin piece of spring steel and yes, it seems
out of scale compared to the matching, original hardware. Clearly
this bar won't be the weak link in the anti-sway system...
The bushings are bright red urethane and are made by Dee Engineering
of Costa Mesa, CA. They match my paint. I would have preferred
black, though...
That's the news, now some hysteria...
While mulling over the parts and planning the assault, I've come to the
sorry conclusion that I don't understand the way that the forces are
transmitted from the end link to the sway bar.
So this is how I think it works, correct me if I'm wrong:
The bar is only supposed to resist inward and outward forces (cornering
forces that want to rotate the wheel off-vertical).
It should not resist up-down forces (normal vertical suspension travel),
and does so by twisting in its two body-mounted bushings, while having
enough slop in its end-link mounts to allow the bar end position to
rotate unrestricted (within its pretty small operational range).
But how are the lateral forces transmitted from the end link to the
bar-end? I mean in practice, as in what components directly contact
and transfer the forces. What parts are the bearing surfaces?
In the original gear, the end-link shaft has an extra sleve that the
two rubber bushings fit onto, so it's the sleve that actually bears
on the rod end. But, why are they such different sizes? The hole in
the bar end is twice as big as the sleve... ???
Someome explain all this please! Is there a FAQ?
--ian???
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