I glad you mentioned this. I tested two sway bars on my 97 E350 15 pasenger van. My goal was to determine which was best for my application which is mostly carrying light loads (camping gear, stuff on the roof etc,). I posted my results in the following forum thread (post #22).

https://www.ford-trucks.com/forums/1...ispreloading=1

For those who want a condensed version: I installed two different size sway bars and drove my van on a winding road and tested the response to aggressive turns at speeds around 40 mph. The three tests were:

1. Standard setup, no sway bar. This was the factory configuration.
2. 0.8" diameter sway bar.
3. 1.18" diameter sway bar (very similar to Hellwig)

The results:

1. Aggressive steering inputs caused understeer. I could feel and hear the front tires trying to break loose. This is how the van has handled for over 200K miles and is "normal".
2. The 0.8" diameter sway bar fixed the understeer. The back end "hooked up" and had the feeling of tracking through the turning motion. The van body resisted swaying toward the outside of the turn.
3. The 1.18" diameter sway bar caused oversteer. It felt like the back of the van wanted to swing around too much to the outside of the turn. This was too much and a little unsettling.

I installed the 0.8" diameter sway bar and have driven several hundered miles on it. I immediatley noticed if roadway imperfections caused one tire to move up or down (like a pot hole) this made the back end bounce like I had installed stiffer coil springs. This was not an artifact, I know how this van normally rode after so many miles.

The rough ride only appears when one wheel has to move up/down but not the other. The roughness is caused by the sway bar resisting the motion because the body is still level but the axle is trying to go "up" (for a bump). The bump event lasts only for a fraction of a second and does not allow the sway bar to move the body or pivot enough to reduce the spring rate (resistance to going up) caused by the sudden motion. So essentially, it feels like the coil sping on that side is much stiffer. If both wheels move up/down in unison there is no force generated by the sway bar because both sides pivot at the links and the ride feels normal.

Note that rock-crawler 4x4 guys disconnect their sway bars when off road to allow the axles to articulate.

Hopefully the link to my previous post and this summary helps clarify my experince and the facts around this topic.

 

Far from being a negative attribute on a sports car. I raced sports cars for many years starting in 1965 on my 64 Corvette …also the first year I upgraded my rear sway bar.

Please do not repeat LIES! The FBI has extensive tables on how people die and gun violence is not the leading cause or even close…do your research!



Not really…50 years of off reading around the world. There is a better solution. :Currie Anti-Rock!



YES for years we disconnected that swaybar…finally a better solution!

 

Ok let me dissect this a bit..

your ride might have been smoother in either configuration depend upon shock absorber rates and spring rates. articulation plays a point as well.

I race cars on tracks in japan as a semi-professional hobby.

sway bars do the same thing the whole world over, they put pressure on the opposite side of the body/wheel that has input. to prevent sway... AKA *** wiggle.

regardless of if its a truck, or a race car it does the same thing. it you are going into a curve it puts pressure on the outside tire to keep the inside tire planted s much as possible as the outside... if you hit a bump, it transfers the energy of the bump to the other side to prevent hop. if you are in a heavy vehicle it transfers energy from one side of the truck to the other to prevent hop.. IE to keep the wheels planted the same as much as possible. everything else is bull****, a pipe dream and an internet he says, she says line of bull****.. stop spreading bull****. the person in this post does not know his backside from a hole in the ground about suspensions.

PS: I consult at a 4wd shop in Japan that Nitto Tires pays money to for feedback and information.

https://www.quadruped.jp/ we build custom suspension packages for people who are not opposed to spending 20~30K for a basic suspension I can provide photos of our builds and references. this **** is pissing me off at this point.

sorry for the anger but I am tired of the misinformation on this forum in regards to something that I have an interest in.

Ken

 

It is foolish to compare a sedan where the weight is evenly distributed on all four wheels to a pickup truck where there is very little weight at the rear wheel when the bed is empty. The two vehicles are in no way comparable. I have a right turn near my house that is never a problem with wheel hop with a sedan or SUV but would definitely generate this with a pickup truck. With past pickup trucks I would build a barrier board and then put my tools and other heavy items between it and the tailgate to gain more traction and control with the vehicle. With my 1-ton truck the sway bar did nothing to reduce sway with a heavy load in the bed. Sway is the result of too little load support and so when in a turn there is more than 50% of the weight in the bed that is applied to outer wheel. Add more load support and sway is reduced. I did this by adding SuperSprings with a double leaf set to augment my standard leaf pack from the factory. The SuperSprings added 1400 lbs of payload capacity much as with the second leaf pack provided standard on 3500 class pickup trucks. The $450 for the SuperSprings corrected the sway problem and no gain at all from the $500 Hellwig Bigwig sway bar in terms of reducing sway.

Now I use a 200 lb camper shell to keep some weight on the rear wheels and with my 2022 F-150 with its relatively soft passenger car like suspension this is enough and I do not need a rear sway bar and Ford does not provide one with any of its 4WD F-150 pickup trucks. My experience is first hand over a period of five decades with dozens of pickup and SUV and jeeps and sports cars, and it is not based on what I read on a website or heard from some guy in a shop. Theory and reality are seldom the same.

 

First of all few cars have 50/50 distribution. Corvettes do and I have been driving and racing since 65…until I got into serious Offroad rock crawling. My success comes from my ability to dial-in suspension. I could lay my 2003 Jeep TJ Rubicon over at a 53 degree angle and not lay it down…!

Worked my way thru college getting 2 degrees…I worked as an automotive engineer working mostly on Corvettes and other GM Hi-Perf cars. I have consulted with both Chrysler and Jeep on the Jeep Rubicon…I received the first Jeep Rubicon delivered to the public 2nd week of Aug 2002.

Yes trucks are nose heavy but not as much as you imply…
My F450 2020 CCLWB King Ranch CAT scale. A difference of 1500 lbs on a 9460 lb truck…less than 60% of the weight is on the front.

















Us racers know suspension is the key to the winners circle. Just glad the older racer came over to me that day in the pits in ‘65 and told me to get a bigger sway bar…

That advice has paid dividends on the track, off road and hauling my camper…

 

With no sway bar the Hellwig or other sway bar can help. Most factory sway bars are now quite good and no real advantage to replacing one with something from Hellwig. For those with trucks without a rear sway bar the ones from Steeda are half the price of Hellwig which has increased prices more than 50% in the past several years.

When I added a Big Wig sway bar to me truck that did not have one from the factory it greatly improved the ride when the camper was off the truck. With the camper in the bed there was no change in the ride. The fix for sway is to add more spring load capacity as the sway is the result of the load on one side in a turn being too great for the springs to manage. This excess movement can only be fixed by adding leaf springs and efforts to put stiffer shocks on and hope this fixes the problem are misguided.