I've been prepping my 1999 Miata Sport to run E-Street next season. I recently purchased a Small Fortune Racing splined front sway bar. Said sway bar requires the removal of the OEM sway bar mounts... complications arose. Namely, all of the OEM 10mm sway bar mount bolt heads broke off. They were essentially just rusted in there and snapped with the lightest amount of effort, even after using penetrating oil and heat on some of them...
The mounts for the SFR bar I'm running was supposed to mount to the frame rails using the OEM bolts. Since that ship sailed, and the SCCA rules state you can drill holes for sway bar mounts (nothing was mentioned about being able to weld), I got out the drill and spent the next few hours drilling holes through the frame-rail in order to run bolts through it to mount my new sway bar mounts. I tried to stay as true to the center as possible (used a center punch, etc), but with the tiny snapped off bolts, my drill inevitably wandered. As such, the mounting holes for all of the bolts (4 on each side) are certainly not perfectly aligned on each side. I'm sure they're off by a few mm here and there.
So, from left to right, I'm certain my sway bar isn't perfectly aligned (it made clocking the arms a pain in the neck, as I'm pretty sure one side is a couple mm lower than the other one).
My question is: if I adjust the end links on both sides to avoid contact with the upper control arms (I might have to set the end links at slightly different lengths), but the bar isn't perfectly alignment/symetrical, how much will it matter when it comes to cornering?
Does it matter if I have to shim one of the end links more than the other to get both sides to be as vertical as possible?
For reference, the SFR bar comes with sealed ball bearings and when rotating it up and down (to clock the arms and adjust end links) I didn't notice any hint of binding or hesitation.
In reply to roninsoldier83 :
With the ARB you want it to be set neutral so it doesn't bind until you need it to. Otherwise, one side of the suspension will load the ARB sooner than the other side, making for unpredictable handling, and, as well, can actually prevent springs from compressing in some situations.
Junghole said:
In reply to roninsoldier83 :
With the ARB you want it to be set neutral so it doesn't bind until you need it to. Otherwise, one side of the suspension will load the ARB sooner than the other side, making for unpredictable handling, and, as well, can actually prevent springs from compressing in some situations.
I was able to center the bar on the chassis (measuring the distance of the bar ends to the chassis), but I'm not sure what, if anything, I can do about it being off a few mm on each side.
I set the end links to have zero preload with the car on ramps, but as a result, they're slightly different lengths.
Since the bar is not perfectly aligned, do you think the handling is essentially going to always be off? Does it matter that the bar seems to rotate easily in the ball bearings it came with?
The mounts and ball bearings are shown here: http://www.smallfortuneracing.com/documents/56.html
Note to self: never buy another bar that requires OEM mount removal on a rusty 22 year old car.
If the bar rotates freely it should be fine.
roninsoldier83 said:
Note to self: never buy another bar that requires OEM mount removal on a rusty 22 year old car.
I think there's some extra words in the middle of that sentence.
dps214 said:
If the bar rotates freely it should be fine.
roninsoldier83 said:
Note to self: never buy another bar that requires OEM mount removal on a rusty 22 year old car.
I think there's some extra words in the middle of that sentence.
It's like you read my mind! I had a brain-freeze and left out many of the colorful words that were swarming around in my head.
Thank you, sir!
If there's no pre-load and the bar moves freely throughout it's range then you're good to go.
