i'm considering installing a rear anti-sway bar on my '93 awd 4.0. i've recently made some repairs to my front suspension, changed over my front springs to new, put new sensatracs all around, bought new radial long trail t/a 's all around, and finished off with an alignment. i'm wondering, for those of you who have installed rear anti-sway bars, did you go with the 7/8" or the 1 1/8" ? what are the differences, benefits etc.? what do you carrie or tow that helped you to make your choice? do rear sway bars add to the life of the front suspension? any thoughts will be appreciated...thanks.

 

I guess, it will improove stability of the vehicle. The rear anty-sway bar is rarelly used on small vans. I was thinking about this problem (I have modified engine and 5st tranny, so my van is VERY fust, but it is not stabil. It is very difficult to drive it over 110 mph...) So your experience will be very interesting for me.

 

If you do alot or any towing, a rear sway bar is a must have. I believe that it was Aerocolorado who installed a rear sway bar and noticed a big differenced towing.

If not, it is pretty much a waste of money, the Aero is not a race car and I doubt you will be doing hair pin turns at 80mph+.

 

it's not? darn...gonna have to nix the tubbed idea with the big M/T out back then. j/k

 

Look, in case of emergency everyone can make a sharp turn and brake to avoid a collision, and it is not easy to stabilise skidding aero. To improove stability is a good idea, but it is difficult to predicate result without testing. I tried 4 types of front springs, different shock absorbers to make my van stabil at 100 mph on a runway!

And in one of sharp turns I lost a bar link, so I had to make modified...

So, prepare to try different bars, rear and fromt springs, absorbers...

 

The size of your front sway bar limits the size that you can put on the rear. I emailed one of the major dealers about one for my '93. His response was :

"You can do larger on the front than the rear. You can do equal sway bar sizes front and rear, but larger in the back than the front is a no no."

My factory front sway bar measures 1 1/8"

 

I think pablo is right. even if we don't race, sooner or later, we all must do an emergency maneuver, anything to improbe handling is a good idea.

Ken

 

I think the Rear Anti-sway bar is one of the top ten aftermarket accessories for the Aerostar. I put a rear anti-sway bar under my '94 extended and was immediately pleased with the improvment. When I picked up my '96 AWD and drove home from Louisville to Birmingham, the first thing I noticed was the way the van "waggs" going down the road. The first thing I swapped was the Anti-Sway bar to the newer van, and the wagging went away. I got mine from JC Whitney, made by Helwig, about $150.00 several years ago. Worth every penny.

 

Dracoscott! Can you make a picture of this bar installed on rear axel.
What links are used?
I improoved handling by installing other front and rear shock absorbers and springs...
May be the best way is to do it in comlex...

 

Greetings

Sorry about the delay, I've been out of town.

I don't have the resources to get a picture of my particular rear anti-sway bar, but here is a link to JC Whitney's catalog which has a picture of an uninstalled anti-sway bar. It clamps to the axle on either side of the differential and each end clamps to the control arm forward the axle.

I don't know the physics of how it works. I just know that the rear end tracks the front end better than ever. Quick lane changes and panic maueuvers require no white knuckled steering corrections. The van goes where you point it.

http://www.jcwhitney.com/autoparts/P...Browse/s-10101

 

It works as a torsion spring. The bar is typically mounted to the body and the ends are attached to the suspension, often the control arm or something similar that travels up and down. On a live axle, often the bar is mounted to the axle and the end links to the body.

Either way, the bar portion is held from from moving up and down. When the body leans in a turn, the suspension travels - one side goes up and the other down. The end links of the sway bar travel with it, which twists the sway bar in torsion, basically adding a third spring to the suspension. This twisting increases the roll stiffness of the suspension, which increases its ability to resist the body roll, and usually does so without the ride penalties of stiffer coil springs. This is basically because when the both wheels travel up and down together (like over a bump), the sway bar pivots in its mount bushings with it rather then twisting, so is does not contribute to the compression stiffness (for lack of a better term) of the suspension.

The sway bar's action helps keep the motions of the vehicle's body in check. One trade off is that it also limits suspension travel somewhat, but on a minivan that isn't the issue that would be if this were an offroad vehicle. Suspension tuning can be done by adjusting the sway bars. Increasing the bar diameter increased the roll stiffness of the suspension. If you increase the front roll stiffness, you tend to increase the tendency toward understeer. If you increase the rear roll stiffness, you increase the tendency toward oversteer.

On vehicle that is large, pondering and highly understeering (like a minivan), adding a rear sway bar increases the roll stiffness enough to significantly reduce (but not eliminate) understeer while helping control the body much more so then before, so it effectively kills to birds with one stone.

 

Torsen Rick,
Thank you for that very perfectly clear understanding.
May

 

Another data point:

I installed a Helwig rear anti-roll bar on my 'Star a couple years ago, and it's definitely reduced the wallowing. It used to be that if I make even the slightest turn, like changing lanes, you can feel the whole car lean. The condition only got worse as the rear springs started to sag.

The front bar on mine is hollow, and has such a huge outside diameter that it's difficult to find an aftermarket urethane bushing for. But I did replace the original end links there were disintegrating with poly's from Energy. They will need the shortest ones they have.

The other problem with the huge front bar is that everything else around it are also huge; the stock rubber bushing has a very large outside diameter, and the plate that fastens the rubber bushing to the frame is equally large. The aftermarket poly bushings (Energy) all have the same outside diameter, regardless of the inside diameter; they're all too small to be properly fastened by the stock plate. The part of the frame that the plate bolts to have holes that are mush further appart than what most aftermarket plate would have. I haven't tried to take it all apart to see if it's possible to drill new holes in the frame to accommodate the smaller aftermarket plates. Maybe I'll do that this weekend, and report later.

 

XLT4WD90 and DRACOSCOTT:

Is there any way you can snap a picture of the swaybar on the van itself and post it? I have a tow hitch on and I'm not sure if that will still fit with the tow hitch.

Thanks

 

Hi Copper,

I have two pictures, but it looks like I'm not allowed to post attachments. Is there another way for me to present them?

If not, let try to explain in less than two thousand words.

The bar is like a very wide U-shape, layed flat, opened to the front. The two arms of the U each have a mounting eye, and are attached to the lower control arms through end links by clamps grabbing the arms near their front pivot. Each clamp is made up of a U-shaped plate that goes over an arm, and a flat plate that bolts to the U plate from the bottom of the arm. The flat plate is wider than the U plate, and has a hole that the end link is bolted to.

The rear, closed part of the U crosses below and behind the diff, and is attached to the axle tubes near the forward bends through poly bushings clamped to the tubes with U bolts and plates with teeth that bite into the tubes. On a typical front bar, this is the part that would be attached to the frame with tubular bushings, but here it is attached to the axle tubes. The furthest rear part of the U extends about 3 inches behind the rear most part of the diff rear cover.

My van does not have a trailer hitch, so I'm not sure what parts of the rear end hardware are involved when installing one. But from what I see, I do not believe the bar will come anywhere close to anything that a hitch would be attached to.