Nice! I thought about doing something similar but figured it's pretty down on the priority list since I already have the gendron bearing mounts. I'm assuming that's just a mounted bronze bearing bought from mcmaster or other industrial supply? Are those brackets custom made, or did you repurpose them?

Curious how they work out. Are you going to those from the gendron bearing mounts or from rubber mounts?

 

That looks awesome! Great job! I thought about doing something similar, but have a workaround at the moment with the stock mounts that i will share later once i get some pics. I always liked the Ankeny mounts better than the Gendron, but this looks like it incorporates the best from both desings. The reason why i liked the Ankeny mounts so much is they are I-beam shaped (like the stock ones, and your design). I believe they will hold up better to side load than the Gendron. If the load is only radial then Gendron mount is sufficient. I do not believe this is the case as we have seen the old design sleeve spacers core out the PU bushing material and washers/flanged bushings were needed to stop this. If the endlinks are not vertical then there is some degree of side loading that should not be ignored.

 

Thanks! would love to see your solution as well. I did this one to try and knock weight and cost down. bronze bushing and pillow block available on amazon cheap, seems to work well. once tested and adjusted it will be available for purchase if anyone wants. maybe $125 dollars. Does the same job as Bills, just lighter, cheaper, and gives even more room for steering boot clearance.

 

Rob is a weight savings pimp!

 

work in progress, but current design seems ok, just needs cleaning up and painting

 

Rob your showing off our secret weapon, take that down! JK Man I wish you got back to me the other day before I ordered more stuff. We'll catch us soon though. Good luck on your upcomming race.

 

Update.

I learned a lot over the weekend. I started Saturday's practice with the same settings I ran at El Toro. The car was very loose, so I began stiffening the front bar a little bit each run. By the end of my run group I was at near full stiff, so I thought, and the car was still unpredictable, but the car was still much better than the previous event. So for Sunday's competition runs I decided to just max out the bar, and see if it would tighten the car up. During Saturday's adjustments, I was only turning the one side, from soft to stiff, the other side was already near full stiff, so when I went under the car to adjust it to full stiff is when I found the blade bolt had loosend up, and the blade was spinning freely, oops! Operator error, I thought I had tightened it hard enough. So I set the bar to full stiff and made my first competition run, now the car was a bull dozer, wouldn't turn at all, but was now putting power down like a demon. My confidence returned, now I know that it was my mistake. With each run I softened the front bar, making it better and better with each adjustment. I didn't have enough runs to get the perfect balance, but was heading there. Sure was nice to be able to make those changes in between runs like that, even though I messed up royaly on Saturday, but I did learn a valuable lesson, so it was a positive weekend.

Jeff

 

On a few recent installs, plus on my own Gendron setup, the arms are very close to the steering boot (esp on the drivers side) when the arm is setup under the steering rod. The bracket above looks like it drops the bar lower which improves clearance. My setup, and a friends recent install both use McMaster endlinks which are shortened by about 1/4" to gain clearance. The arms still rub the boot a little.

Does anyone know if it would be OK to make a 1/16" or 1/8" plate to shim the stock bracket down further?

I am assuming if the endlinks are still at a reasonable angle, the forces would remain mostly in line with the chassis bolts through the bracket, so the risk would be low.

 

Thorne: great job on the bar mounts bud! If I was keeping my Gendron bar, I'd buy this in a heartbeat, assuming you're not the guy that did the welding. JK! Bill's mounts are great but way overpriced IMO, and it was a matter of time before someone else made a cheaper one. Free ecomony is a bitch.

If anyone is interested, I have my Gendron bar with SUPER Monster custom 1.5" bar for sale. Works great on my car, but want to sell because we run on 3 different sites with different grip and hence different bar settings , and want the Ankeny bar for easier adjustability. $550 plus shipping.

 

James, time to update your sig Pic. Something about blue STR CR's just do it for me