What's the length of your end links? center to center hole

 

OK so this is the general idea of what I'm trying to do. It's almost really good. It actually held up really well in normal "fairly spirited" street driving, with one blade set to full stiff and the other set to full soft. No evidence of any clearance issues or damage.

Overall view from front corner:



Closer front view:



Side Close up, left is front of the car



Bottom view:



It's basically a long (5" I think) grade 8 bolt with a 3/4" OD, 3/8" ID steel spacer, the other side you can't see is simply a washer and lock nut on the bolt holding it to the tab on the control arm.

The problem is I finally got a chance to do good in depth calculations and if I change it to full stiff and am cornering at autocrossing levels I will be right on (or slightly past) the borderline of the bolt clamp load not holding the whole assembly in place (the bolt head and spacer will lift up a bit on the edges) and therefore fatiguing the bolt at some point. It's also not that far off from bending the bolt/spacer, although that part is probably fine just not nearly as over designed as I'd like.

So I could upsize the spacer to 1" diameter which would sufficiently overdesign to not bend anything, however that still wouldn't fix the main issue of not getting enough clamping force out of a 3/8" bolt to be able to take 1000 lbs of force 4" away without moving a little, and probably the bolt itself would break from this. I'm limited by that 3/8" bolt hole on the control arm. So I need some way to supplement that and brace it somewhere else on the control arm.

If I can just support it on the front side of the control arm just before it connects to the heim joint that would be perfect.

Lots of possible directions to go swimming around my head:

Option 1: I was thinking about something where I clamp something around that edge of the control arm and somehow hold it with that, but I don't have much space and don't want to add a lot of weight. It has to support it both from the bottom and the top, so I was thinking some kind of u bolt on top and spacer on bottom so it's resting directly on the control arm. You can see from the bottom view I don't have much room there though.

Option 2a and 2b: Another option would be to use that lightening hole we were talking about earlier just as a secondary support. Either I could a) mount some kind of right angle bracket with a rod end to that lightening hole we were talking about (rigid at the lightening hole so motion ratio doesn't change), and have it support the end of the spacer, but I don't like that much because it's a weird size hole (0.588" diameter, right in between 1/2 and 5/8) and is pretty far away. Or b) could make a bracket to go between these two points with a new mounting hole to mount the sway bar, just slightly inboard of the normal sway bar mounting place. Would change my motion ratio slightly which is bad but it would also lessen the misalignment of the rod end which is good.

Option 3: Use the shock mounting bolt somehow to mount a supporting bracket. Unfortunately the shock's mounted on a bushing so this would give a little play in the support, probably not a huge deal.

Option 4: Have a piece machined where it has a recess inside that slips over the sway bar mounting tab on the control arm to replace the current spacer, therefore adding its strength to the bolt clamp. Then maybe I don't need to support it anywhere else. Don't have a machine shop though and I'm not fully confident that this would work, can't really wrap my brain around it.

Option 5: Bolt some kind of thick extension to the blade itself and angle it so goes under the control arm and to a point right under the sway bar mounting point on the other side of the control arm, then I can just run the rod end straight down with a normal length bolt and not have to worry about secondary supporting. Problem with this is I probably give up too much ground clearance if I make it strong enough to not affect the stiffness much, plus it'd be heavy, although I haven't thought about this one much. Ground clearance is fine right now, but just barely...it's just a hair higher than the jack point in the center of the car.


Still thinking about it...obviously lots of ways to go, any input would be helpful.

 

About 2.4" or so, I could make it 2.3" maybe by taking out the jam nut but it doesn't really help me.

That's with just under 0.5" of thread engagement.

 

Is it the arm that won't clear the damper in its normal position or the end links?

The new mount style seems good but I don't think it'll be good for the amount of force that it needs to hold.


I'd say if the arm will clear the damper then do the exact opposite of what you just did but maybe extend it by a1/2 inch or so towards the back of the arm.

Sorry for the noobness but does the arms flat side need to be horizontal or can it be vertical?

 

The arm does not clear if I rotate it to the height that it needs to be for the endlink to be vertical (it does for the penskes, just barely, but not for the ohlins).

The arm flat side can be horizontal, vertical, or anywhere in between...that's how you adjust the stiffness of a blade swaybar is by rotating the arm. Vertical is full stiff, horizontal as shown is full soft.

I agree that it's not strong enough as is, but with some additional support somehow it could work.

 

Can you shorten the end link then space the end link at the blade end away so that your end link would be vertical?

Thanks for the explanation of the blade, I had a funny feeling that was the case but wasn't sure.

D o you have any pics when it was mounted the other way?

 

No pics of it mounted the normal way, sorry. I thought about changing it back to take pics but it's a big production, I basically have to reinstall the sway bar. I also searched for pics of it mounted the normal way and no luck. So if anyone has any that would be great.

I don't quite understand what you're saying about shortening the end link etc. Are you talking about in my under the control arm configuration, spacing the end link back further on the blade so that it's further over to the side? In order to get rid of the misalignment? I could but then I'd have to rotate the bar further down (you can see there's already very little clearance between end link and control arm so that would mean no room). Then I have issues having the endlink make the angle back up to vertical, plus again I start hurting ground clearance. Anyway I'm guessing (although I'm not 100% sure) that that misalignment angle is OK, it's just something that would be nice to get rid of but not crucial.

The other complication to keep in mind is the mounting of blade to endlink is done by threads that are machined onto the blade itself - no separate bolt. There is no room to space anything on those threads...even doing everything per the instructions you have to use a thin jam nut because it just barely has enough thread.

Thanks for the input though, I appreciate your suggestions.

 

The other thing I thought about is asking Performance Shock if they could make a longer clevis and shorten the shock body to match, so the shock itself is above the end link. Not sure if the mounting screws to the clevis are strong enough to take the longer moment though, and I'm also not sure if they'd be willing to make a custom clevis for not ridiculous amounts of money, and finally I'm not sure if that would give a long enough shock body.

 

Bummer about the threads on that blade but I'm not sure going the route of shortening your useable stroke for a bar would be worth it.

You're welcome, thank you for explaining it all.

 

Well I know in the front it's got a ridiculously long body length so usable stroke isn't an issue normally, with the ohlins though you already give up a bunch to the inline canister so I'm not sure if it is or not. Still looks pretty long but I dunno.

If I didn't specify already, in the rear it's no issue even with the ankeny blade rear bar so I don't have to worry about reducing stroke there.