so i am just adding things now to make it perform better. I now am wanting to add a 1-1/8" front sway bar and i am thinking about a 3/4" rear. However, i am running a ford exploder rear end. what sway bar can i use. i have seen the ones that are semi universal with the splined ends that you can set where you need them.
IS this the best way to go?

Also. with respect to the steering. I have factory power assist steering. i keep chewing up the bushings that mount the ram to the body. Anybody know why this may be?

 

1 1/8" is excessive. Use a 1".

As for the bushings, you are turning the steering wheel when the car is not moving.

 

i dont think i turn it much without moving. i will however take notice of it.

What aboput a rear swaybar?

 

I also would suggest a 1" front swaybar, try it first alone before thinking of a rear. Depending on your cars setup a rear bar could cause snap oversteer, etc., some have installed rear bars and removed them as the car reacted worse with it. It has to be a balanced system.

Do you have a lowered ram mount due to headers or the stock location? You do have retaining nuts/washers on both sides of the bushings and they are snugged to slightly compress the rubber? I agree that if you turn the wheels at all w/o the tires rolling you are putting the majority of stress on those bushings.
Jon

 

Sway bar size depends on the suspension setup. 1.125 front is big, and will definitely need either a lot of rear bar, or a lot of rear spring, or both. I'm running 1.125 front, .75 rear with 620 springs and 5 leaf with stiff shocks and a stiff chassis. It has a very slight understeer tendency but is close to neutral balance....but it's quite stiff.

If you're like most people, your front is likely already much too stiff in relation to the rear, and a big front sway bar will make it understeer worse than it already does.

 

i'm running stock front bar with monte carlo bar, and brace and Arning drop in front, koni shochs, HD springs. rear is 5leaf, no bar and gas-justs shocks. I have a feeling if I add a 1" bar then the car will be oversteering even more. If I go through a pothole corner, the whole back tends to hop. so I staid away from that idea. but I'm not a suspension engineer. maybe it would imrpove things. don't know

 

A stiffer front bar will make the car more understeerish as long as that's the only thing you change. Just adding a rear bar, or swapping in a stiffer rear bar if you already have one there, is what will make it more oversteerish.

Starting with an OE car that tends to understeer based on the OE spring and OE sta-bar stiffnesses, if you then swap in a much heavier front bar you'll normally need to add some sort of rear bar in order to maintain somewhere near the same understeer/oversteer handling balance.

A stiffer front bar should not adversely affect rear axle hop in a rough corner. That's partly a rear suspension stiffness and shock issue and partly the nature of the stick-axle unsprung mass beast.

67mustang302's setup sounds pretty good for a front engine RWD corner-carver but might be a bit too stiff for some people or some local road conditions. I don't offhand know what the effect of doing just the bars and keeping the OE springs would be.


Norm

 

Yes i have the drop bracket for the long tube headers.

Currently i am running the 1" drop springs from Laurel Mountain mustang (i believe they are a 620 spring) i have the uca drop and kyb gr2 shocks with the stock sway bar. On the rear i have 4.5 mideye leafs and the same shocks.
the car handles well however, i still have too much body roll. i really just want to stiffen it up in the corners.

also, i had to remove the curved monte carlo when i installed the a/c. it was touching the compressor. i want to install the straight one but i think it will hit my dist. i am running the msd billet, not the pro billet. will it clear a straight bar?

 

I am going from memory here, so I may be waaay out in left field, but I thought the rear swaybar size is relative the to the front bar size. I remember an article pointing out that if you are running one on the rear that you should not go so big on the front and spread the load out so to speak.

With that said I am going to add a watts link to the back end.

 

Then I'd give everything else in that article a thorough evaluation with a very skeptical attitude. It's about balance, which isn't quite the same as even distribution.

The bigger you go with a rear bar, the more front roll stiffness you need to add to keep the car properly balanced, assuming that it was reasonably balanced in the first place.

I can give you an OE example. One other chassis that came in base form with a 29mm front bar and no rear bar, went up to a 32mm front bar /22mm rear bar option as part of a package.


This post was a bit long in getting written - we all got chased out of the building on account of the earthquake that just hit somewhere in VA and had the 3rd floor in this building swaying enough to easily feel being moved back and forth. Yeah, I know using the word "sway" seems like a bad pun.


Norm