My 49 Buick sedanett has a 70 Cadillac posi rear end. I was looking at a 70's Cad limo that had a rear sway bar. Is it worth the trouble to get one and install it? Does it help in handling that much?
Put a Chassis Engineering rear sway bar on my Shoebox. I believe it improved the handling enough to justify the cost and time yo install it.
I installed a CHassis Engineering sway bar on my 37 Chevy sedan. It helped a lot with the body roll and improved the handling. I think that they help.
Measure your parameters. Then go to Pick-n-Pull, look under the F150 Ford pickups (rear) There's as sanitary an anti-roll ("sway") bar as you could ever find. Be surprised as I was how 'universal' the fit is... (are you dubious that a vehicle with rear overhang could 'sway'?)
I added a rear sway bar to my 63 Comet. It did not help. It did not prevent body roll. When the body rolled over as physics demands, the sway bar merely picked up the inside wheel along with it. The loss of traction was a worse effect than the roll it was supposed to prevent. I guess the bar was too big for the light car.
rear and front bar should not be same size, do not just run a rear bar - the way that it attaches makes big difference.
....too much rear "antirollbar " leads to a VERRY "loose" or "over steering" car, if you run a rear antirollbar the front should have a larger one...
IMHO, yes. It makes the world of difference. I've had one on all my cars and never had any issues whatsoever. I don't drive them that hard and only use OEM rated, front and rear.
what are you trying to achieve? less roll? increase the front size and fit a rear to keep things balanced, you want less understreer? maybe just the rear bar..... etc ...... changing things has effects, just adding a rear bar (or bigger front or a front where there wasn't one) on an otherwise good handling car may turn it bad (but decrease roll). By "Handling" I mean what you think plus what happens when you swerve at highway speed to miss some idiot, get it wrong and it will go bad.
This is one of those subjects that you may be better served to buy a book or two on the subject. Suspension dynamics are far more complicated and subtle than many of us fully realize. Boning up on the basics will better enable you to choose what will work best for your specific car. Ray
I have CE rear sway bar and it works great on the 48, but the front one didn't fit right, I tried CE's shorter version too, I can't see any difference with or without the front one installed so I left it off.
I always felt that a front was more helpful in just driving around. Not for high zoot corner burners who get Andretti flashbacks now and then, just plain ol driving. A sway bar (really an "anti sway" bar) essentially borrows some spring load from the opposite side of the car to hold the frame/body assembly flatter in cornering. Rear bars help, but a good front bar supplemented with a rear Panhard Bar might do just fine for the average build. How hard do you drive? You like high speed corners? Are there any issues right now, such as excessive lean pulling into a driveway? That limo probably needed the extra help given load considerations and the total length of the car. Is the chassis/rear axle assy built like an oversized Chevelle/Regal/Cutlass, as in angled 4 bar? The sway bars used on those took measurable deflection out of the rear suspension by connecting the 2 lower bars with a sway bar. You could benefit from that too.
Yes, very help full in my opinion. I put a '79 Trans Am posi rear under my '40 Plymouth coupe. With the stock rear leafs this car had a lot of body roll. I added the stock TA rear sway bar, it made a big difference. corners pretty flat now.
What's your handling balance now? Anti-roll bars ("sway bars") are for reducing roll overall first and tuning handling balance second. Add or increase rear bar if you've got too much understeer. (It's a bit counter-intuitive, but adding a bit of rear weight transfer this way will reduce front weight transfer. That's because total weight transfer doesn't depend on roll stiffness.) Edit: on the other hand, if you're experiencing huge body roll at the moment just about anything you do to reduce roll will tend to reduce understeer. That's because the (lack of) camber recovery on your front end means that at relatively large roll angles you've got quite a lot of positive caster on the outer front wheel, and almost as much negative caster on the inner, all while the rear wheels are pretty much perpendicular to the road. That means outward camber thrust at the front end and consequently understeer. Bigger front bar, add rear bar, it doesn't matter that much until you get rid of that huge camber change.
I copied the 70 Cadillac that I got the rear end from, angled 4 bar with the stock 70 Cad bars, top bars being shorter. The limo I looked at had the sway bar connected to the lower 2 bars.
You would likely feel an improvement, might gain some subtle stability and a little flatter cornering at speed, like on a freeway ramp.