I'm curious, on my lowered '56 Chevy pickup...will a front swaybar help with handling and bodyroll much? Is it worth the cash to install? Before anyone goes telling me I need an IFS, don't bother...I'm staying old school on this build. I'm just wondering if it will a significant enough improvement to even bother.
I put one in my 55.5 Chevy truck (along with a MII IFS). It handles like a go-kart now. I have a rear sway bar too. Not sure how it would work on a stock I-beam though, sorry.
I understand how and why it works on an IFS, just not sure it has the same effect on a straight axle.
Well, I'm looking at around $220 for the front kit, just wanted some reassurance before I fork over the cash.
My '72 IH camper special has one from the factory which should tell you something. With a camper on it has a higher centre of gravity and really needs some help with roll etc. It does have a beam axle front with leaf springs and drum brakes, so anti-sway bars do work with leaf springs and I-beam axles. Chris
It'll help a lot - and you can save your money & adapt one over from a wrecking yard truck. It'll work just as good.
I had a 37 chevy coupe and a vw super beetle sway bar fitted near perfect I made some brackets to fit on the bottom of the sping u bolts and used 4 shperical rod ends and an internal threaded tube from the end of the bars and mounted the rubber bushes on the chassis rails and it ran like it was on rails best thing i ever did on the car
And on the same topic: Once you have the front sway bar In my case a skinny early 50's bar), does a rear bar add much to the handling of a mild, street-driven car?
55-59 Chevy suburbans and panel trucks came stock with a spindly little sway bar. Mounted brackets on the front U bolts and had funky links connecting the outer ends to the frame, I could probably post a picture if I were ambitious and not ready to go out to dinner right now. I'd second the "try to make something else fit" concept, look at a 70s-80s Chevy 4x4 for donor parts?
---------------------- Yep.....even ol' Henry thought enough of them to put them on the front ends of '40 Fords....so they're even "traditional" too! Mart3406 ==============================
Its more of a safety issue and if your in a town like me where there are more grannys in a hurry to get no where and drive like drunk 10 year olds then yea handling would be good idea to avoid any mishaps.....
Anti-roll bars are used to fine-tune suspension behaviour by adjusting the ratio of front:rear roll stiffness. If there is too great a tendency to oversteer, one would add (or increase the size of) an anti-roll bar at the front. This increases the front roll stiffness and, hence, the load transfer onto the outside front wheel. That tyre runs bigger slip angles, and the oversteer is no more. It all works well enough as long as you don't ask too much of your anti-roll bars. The basic roll stiffness has to be there already in the springs. Running too much anti-roll bar with too-soft springs creates a damping problem, as the springs and anti-roll bars together now create a situation where the overall spring rate for bump motions is a lot less than the overall spring rate for roll motions. Then, if the damping is right for bump you'll be underdamped in roll; if the damping is right for roll you'll be overdamped in pure bump. That's why I say anti-roll bars are essentially undamped, and that that is a basic shortcoming of them. Moreover, too much of a roll-stiffness difference between front and rear will underperform due to the frame distortion it can induce, especially if the mix is contrary to the weight distribution and there is a significant weight bias to one end of the vehicle - exactly like you'll find on a pick-up truck with an empty bed. Unfortunately that is precisely the sort of situation where one would be inclined to want more roll stiffness on the light end. That is why conventional suspension tuning wisdom lays so much emphasis on a torsionally-rigid vehicle structure, which is exactly what a truck with a separate bed doesn't give you. Bottom line, go for a light anti-roll bar on the front, and an extremely light bar or no bar on the back; run a tiny bit of negative camber on the front if you can; don't run too much air in the rear tyres; and be careful on loose surfaces!
Put a front. If you find yourself oversteering alot, do not put a rear bar. You may just need to lower the rear tire pressure a bit to increase grip. Rear bars sometimes tighten the rear suspension too much and create the go kart feel and alot of fishtailing. That is what you do not want - supposedly.
Love those sway bars. I put dual factory bars on my 56 Ford way back when... rode good and handled like a go cart... Jay
I've got them front and rear on my '40 and am more than happy with them. In my opinion they made a huge difference to how the car handles.
i think my frame is a panel truck frame because of the factory swaybar on the front axle and it looks like the rear has been cut to the right length for the bed.i was wondering if i could get some end links for that sway bar or just ditch it?looks like i will try it and see if i like it or not.
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