Front sway Bar on 1984 911 - My experience

[geoff_k]

The joy.

What a lot of work.

Installed polyurethane bushing on the front sway bar. There was no way we (learned mate and I) were going to get the bushing inserted into the bracket on the control arm. Decided to take the lip off the bushing and then inserted it with a little force.




Next step was refitting the sway bar.

A hand winch (along with hose clamps to stop the winch from slipping )was used to compress the sway bar to fit the bushings on the Control arm. The cloth was used to save the paint finish and provide a bit more friction. The picture below is not correct as the cloth is only used near clamps and does not cover the ends of the sway bar.





There was some trial and error to get the hand winch positioned along the sway bar to allow it to be fitted. It also an idea to test the hand winch process before trying it under the car to make sure you can release it easily enough.

Once we had the hand winch in the correct position, but before the sway bar was put under compression, one side of the sway bar was fitted. Cannot recall if we used a mallet and block of wood at this point.

The correct positioning of the sway bar was determined by checking the positioning of the sway bar clamp .



Next, compression was applied. Once we had the other end of the sway bar aligned with the control arm sway bushing, the sway bar was pushed through. At this stage a tiny bit more compression made the job easier. Once it in, a block of wood and a rubber mallet was used to make the finer positioning.
Next the sway bar clamps were fitted.
Took the opportunity to clean up the sway bar (poor job in the end and replace all bolts and nuts with Stainless Steel ones.

[Jesse16]

Wow, and without removing one control arm. Interesting.
Good job figuring a method!

[Driven97]

I hate the design of the front swaybar. I tried the ratchet strap idea, but all that potential energy scared the heck out of me so I pulled an A-arm.

Side note that you might not want to hear: Did you fit the bushings properly before installing?

I drove my car around like this for two years:


And wondered why no matter what I did, both the ride and handling of the front end sucked. I didn't think it would be a big deal, but sanded my bushings down to fit like this:



I know it doesn't look like much, but it couldn't have possibly been a bigger deal.

Suddenly the car was 100% transformed - both grip and ride improved dramatically, and handling balance was completely restored. Basically I wasted two years of chasing my tail on crap handling just because of this one little trick.