The Bean

The shocks feel great. We competed in an SCCA road rally this weekend, and the "float" and bouncing in the front end are greatly reduced. I'm sure some more shock tuning will continue to improve things. Right now I am running compression:10 rebound:14. 

That being said, the front certainly still needs a sway bar. The shocks feel much better, but aren't a replacement for the missing sway bar. I'm debating using a mustang ii, TCI mustang ii, or splined bar for the front. The mustang ii option shown on a previous page is certainly the easiest, but weighs a ton.

Here are a couple pictures from a wild weekend camping near the Salton Sea.

Bombay drive in:

Slab City:

The car ran great, and we were able to improve the timing table and acceleration enrichment tuning while bombing through the canyons. These tires are a night and day difference from the old all seasons. A rough estimation of mpg came out to 16.5. Could be worse!

So, there is a track day this weekend. The proper response? Start a project...

I've been collecting front sway bars in the hopes that I can find a Goldilocks option. The latest is a hollow 26mm bar from the front of a C4 Corvette:

Of course, it came off of a Corvette, so it has some weirdness:

The bushings are easily pressed out though. We can figure out end links once in place. Here are rough dimensions for those looking for them:

If we mock up the bar in place it wants to live where the power steering cooler is. We can find a home for that later.

The bushings that came with the bar are old and worn out. The issue here is that they don't work very well to hold the mounting brackets straight for welding. So instead tack the upper brackets to a square tube to hold everything straight.

The observant among us may notice the brake lines are gone in the last picture. They were in the way... 4 days to go.

After adding some support and welding we have frame mounts:

I've been spending too much time with the TIG welder. My MIG skills are rusty, nothing a lick of paint can't take care of:

So, the thin vertical strips are just compression reinforcement for the horizontal mount plate, right? 

Did you weld both sides of the verticals?

Duster, yes those are just reinforcement, and they are only welded on 1 side. The whole mount is made of 14ga, which is pretty light for the application. It would be stronger with a plate bridging all the verticals and enclosing the mount. However with the current time crunch this solution should be good enough. Thankfully, if this isn't strong enough it'll be easy to cut off and replace. 

In reply to Shavarsh :

When I adapted C4 front bar to rear of MonZora, I pushed those end bushings out and welded some sleeves in the holes, and used end links from C5 rear. Eventually I cut the end links, rotated the ends to neutral positions as-installed, then sleeved and welded them.

scroll down to 4/3/2024

That's the plan Angry, glad to hear it's been successfully implemented. Here is my first attempt from a couple weeks ago:

I've got some ideas to lower the profile. The main concern for me is footprint.

So, once the sway bar was mounted, I needed to take care of the power steering cooler. While playing around I found that if one of the mounting tabs were angled back it might clear everything in it's current mounting position. No time was wasted:

I'll admit it's starting to look a bit messy under here at this point. Also the clearances are tight, but they are there. I am pleased enough with this solution to move on. 3 days to go.

Alright, a bit of recap. Now that the bar was mounted we needed links. A bit of machining and welding later:

The spacer portion was a bit too long so 2 solutions: precision grinding, and trimmed bolt heads.

Then the links were finished:

Handheld precision grinding is a method even us ham-fisted types can use! 

From an engineering perspective, why wouldn't you have welded a stud in there? Instead of Shaving down the bolt head? Would have give you more clearance in my mind, but there's got to be a reason you didn't do it

Duster, that's a great idea, and is likely a stronger setup. This was the first solution that came to mind and I was time limited. However, I do think the bolt heads at <.180" tall are lower profile than the stud and nut combo. Also turning down the OD of the bolt head allowed for greater articulation than a nut (also why a button head screw was used instead of socket cap or hex).

Ahhh!

I was thi king somewhere else on the clearance issue. Like the backside of the blade of the sway bar to the spring....

Ah yes, the clearance issue is about the knuckle hitting the bolt heads at full lock during suspension droop. Last modification before the track day was front brake lines. The existing hard lines have been adapted quite a few times, and are a maze of metric and American converters and lines. I decided to go full soft line. So convert to -3an at the master, and run the lines all the way to the caliper:

This is the only decent picture I have, but the new lines have cleaned things up nicely. After a thorough bleed with the Motive we had a decent pedal again.

Finally, late night before the track day, we got a test drive around the block. Then back up at 3am to head to the track.

The track day was epic, here are a couple more pictures:

The car exhibited understeer at the limit, which is totally new behavior, showing the sway bar is doing its job. The brakes were generally up to the task but every 3-4 laps the pedal would start to get long until a few cool down corners. We also found the limits of the fuel cell setup. The car will start to starve in the corners, but only once the gauge is reading empty. I am extremely pleased about this. The forces experienced during these track sessions are the highest the car has seen, and the oil pan baffles, and fuel pump basket worked flawlessly. With the 200tw tires and other recent improvements to the car it felt genuinely fast. At night we camped in the paddock, and the wife drove the next day.

After another day wringing out the car, we packed it back up and drove home without issue.

Glad to see that the modifications worked.

Car is looking gooooooood