The Gendron or Monster bars are basically just Speedway engineering bars with custom mounts and custom bar ends. And speedway engineering bars are for Nascar or stock cars in general. There are other companies that make the same swaybars, in particular one is Schroeder Torsion bars. I'm just curious to know if anyone has used any of these bars before. I'm trying to get a Hollow 1-3/8" bar or a hollow 1-5/16" bar and Schroeder has both in 48 spline specs, but I would like to know if the splines are the same between the Schroeder and Speedway Engineering bars so I can use Speedway's arms (they're about $60 each compared to Schroeder's which are $360+ for a set!!!!!!!).


Thanks for your help!
Austin

 

In for info ...

 

...why not just buy a speedway bar?

 

Well they are basically the same thing, but if I went with Speedway Engineering, I would have to special order the 1-5/16" OD bar that I want, which would probably add cost. I can order a Schroeder bar for about $100 that is the size I want and everything, and I want to order the arms from Speedway Engineering. The only thing I don't know is if the Speedway engineering arms will fit to the Schroeder bar. After Christmas I may just order them and find out. they are both 48 spline or 49 spline (depending on which you want), I'll probably go with the 48 spline.

 

You should be able to ask Speedway, just tell them you have a Schroeder bar and you wanted to use a speedway arm and ask if they're compatible. If they don't know you could ask the reverse question to Schroeder.

 

There are machining standards for splines so tooling is pretty standard and replaceable. They would probably be interchangable. But you could always oder both without holes/splines and then take to a machine shop.

 

The reason they have custom bar ends is that the ones that you can get from Speedway at least tend to interfere with the shock bodies or other suspension parts. For that reason, I wouldn't assume that you can just bolt on another vendor's NASCAR bar on and go -- plan on bending the arms yourself (or buying a Gendron bar if you're not equipped to do the bending yourself).

 

I am assuming you want this for auto x.

I would call speedway and ask if the 48 spline bar in an industry standard or their special configuration.

Ask what the spec is for their 48 spline and then ask the other company if their standard is the same.

 

Yes, I am getting this for autocross, specifically to run in the BS/RTR class (race tires are too expensive for my tastes). I'll probably do what IntegraR0064 said, I hadn't thought to do that. I thought the splines were probably made to specific engineering specs, but that doesn't mean that every company is going to make them to those specs. I'll call them and find out. Oh, and I have the ability to bend the arms myself (large press and everything), so I should be able to get the proper clearance. Also, if you look at the picture online of the Gendron bar (and bar ends), you can see the wrinkle in the arm where it's bent. It looks like they just buy the exact same arm ($65ea) and then bend it to whatever spec they have for each arm. I'll be doing the same, but it will be more like a 'bend, install, test, repeat until correct'. I'm going to keep this post updated with the info. I get. Another member on here has already done the exact same thing, but with a Speedway Engineering 1.375" hollow bar, whereas I want to use a 1-5/16" bar.

 

Yep, that's pretty much what he does. Then powdercoats everything (and remember you can't powder coat the splines, and in the case of bearing mounts might have some issue with bar OD/bearing ID with the powdercoating). You have to make the bushing or bearing mounts too, not that it's all that hard, but something to keep in mind. Pretty sure you need to space the bar out some from where it is stock and it has to be pretty strong to support the bigger bar, although I don't remember very well what stock looks like, it's been a long time.