Installing the Swaybar

Installing the Chassis Engineering swaybar turned out to be a little more difficult than it looked. The first step was the removal of the front crossmember rivet to the frame rail. One on each side. Did I tell you I already painted the frame?

It was my fault, I knew about it but forgot about it. So I ground the lower rivet head off of each rivet on the bottom side of the frame rail. Then all of my drill bits seemed to go dull at once so I sat right there and sharpened them on my hand held grinder! A few minutes later both rivets had been drilled out. The swaybar mount was then held in place and the forward hole marked on each frame rail. A couple more minutes later and I as ready to install the swaybar.

I put the rubber bushing around the swaybar, put the mount around the bushing and start bolting it in place. Then I notice the swaybar is not going to clear the radiator support braces from the crossmember to the frame rails. I remembered seeing two predrilled steel plates in the package of swaybar goodies so I reread the directions and see that they are spacers and may be required. That usually means that are required and I should have caught that the first time I read the directions. Unbolt the swaybar, slide in the spacers and rebolt in place.

Next up was to bolt the swaybar to the perch pins. A so called peanut is provided to fit on the lower part of the perchpin at the wishbone. Then the long bolt bushings and spacer are installed between the peanut and swaybar. Of course by the time you install all the new bushings there is not enough thread left to put on the nut. It also looked like the clearances were off as it looked real close to the spring. At this point I decided to take a break.

When I returned I decided to go a head and install it and see how it looks afterwards. I tried a couple things to install the nut on the end of the sway bar before an easy answer came to me. I placed a small jack on the bottom of the bolt to keep it from pushing out. Then I just pushed down on the sway bar to compress the bushings, spun the nut down a few turns and did the same thing on the other side.

It turned out to be pretty easy, I was just making hard on myself. I then made sure everything was square and in place and tightened all my bolts. The clearances are kind of tight at the spring but everything does clear and they are the same on both sides. I guess I'll find out if there are any problems later down the road.