My brain is pretty much exploded. I came up with a few crazy mounts that involved clamps to clamp to the A-arm but they would have been very expensive to get machined and there are lots of critical dimensions due to the weird shape of the a arms and I'm sure I'd have to build a few prototypes before getting it completely right.

I pretty much decided just to give up and go with the penskes but then I talked to another friend with an ARE bar and he said even with penskes there's some minor contact (I have some nicks on my penskes at the endlink area but assumed they were from something else...maybe this is the reason). So then I'm back to the Ohlins if I have to modify the bar regardless.

Long story short, I think I'm going to do the "keep it simple stupid" approach and just cut the sway bar blade mounts and reweld them angled more inwards (about 3 degrees so that it moves them 0.4"-0.5" away from the shock on each side, then just mount the sway bar the normal way above the control arm. I figure the ohlins need an extra 1/4" plus a little bit more safety margin over the clearance I currently have. Luckily they're just regular carbon steel so cutting and rewelding should be ok. Might even be able to get away with just cutting and rewelding one side 6 degrees in then scooting the bar over 1/2" in the mounts, I'll have to see how much play I have in bar length. Based on trigonometry that should end up with an endlink angle of about 10 degrees relative to straight up and down, angled the same way the shocks are angled, but that'd almost be better because that's the direction the a arm articulates relative to the bar anyway. Worst case I think 10 degrees should be fine right?

Edit...they're already angled some, this will angle it more. Didn't measure but eyeballing it looks like 10 degrees now, so it'll be more like 20.

 

Sorry for asking the obvious, but can Guy offer any solutions for his bar to work with the Ohlins or even Penskes with absolutely no contact?

 

He doesn't currently. If you asked him maybe he would. I told him it doesn't fit and he didn't offer up anything other than the suggestion that rewelding them might be an option but he doesn't know. I didn't push it, maybe if I had he'd help out more.

I expect my solution of reangling the arms will work, in which case maybe you could see if he'll do it that way from the start. Either that or I'll start my own sway bar company.

 

That must be a great upgrade!

 

The sway bar that Jon has I believe is one of the older-gen 1.25" bars. That was developed on a B-Stock car. When lowered the shock is a lot closer to the end links. Guy's newer (latest) sway bars do not have this problem as he developed them on the STR car. There are no solutions for the Ohlins unless someone here on the west coast can provide a car with them in order to fab up a sway bar. I can take pictures of my sway bar and can assure you that there is plenty of clearance with Penske shocks. Guy could not do anything to modify Jon's current sway bar seeing as the blade accepters are welded to the torsion bar. He could reweld it but without having the car to work on it would be hard to judge exactly how much clearance he will need. The only solution for Jon is to get one of the newer bars. IMO Guy's 1.375" thin wall bar is something to consider.

 

Have you or anyone else out there used both the Ankeny and the Gendron front and or rear bars?

Obviously you like the Ankeny.
I would like to know your opinion and anyone else's of what the differences are and why you like one better then the other, other than the obvious advantage of being able to change settings faster.

I have read that Bill (Grendron maker) state that the blade arms are lass desirable because the rate increase is not linear as they deflect. An yet bladed arms are what practically all pro and purpose built race cars use.

Also how much better have you found it to be?

 

I have both front and rear ankeny swaybars. They do exactly what you want them to do in a short period of time. Stiffer is stiffer, softer is softer. I often find myself changing swaybar settings between runs to improve the car. At nationals we only messed with the front swaybar for balance. Hard to do that with a gendron. Both swaybars achieve the same thing.

 

It's definitely not a 1.25" OD, it's bigger than that. Pretty sure it was bought early this year, but I'm the second owner so I'll have to check. Now I'm wondering if it's just a quality control issue, or if I did something stupid when I installed it since I had no instructions. How much clearance do you have? Here's a picture of mine installed in the correct position (everything loose and car in the air). It looks like there's more room than there is for some reason, maybe because it's loose. Like I said it just barely has enough room for the penskes, it's not even 1/4" away and due to movement has lightly nicked them a couple times.

 

I did talk to PSI and suggested making a really long clevis so that the fat part of the shock doesn't start until above the endlink. He said it's definitely possible that would work and they can do the extended clevis easily. The only potential hiccup is having a long enough shock body still, he has to check their notes to see if it would still have sufficient travel. I suspect this idea won't pan out but it's possible and if it does that would be sweet...then I don't have to do anything.

 

Really don't want to turn this into a sway bar thread so let's move the sway bar specific stuff to the sway bar thread. My posts are specifically about getting the bar to work with the Ohlins so they're more applicable to this thread.

I replied to your post there, here's a link: https://www.s2ki.com/s2000/topic/904...t__p__22257216