FM Sways
 

Wimpy, wimpy, wimpy
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HEFTY HEFTY HEFTY
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Wimpy, wimpy wimpy
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HEFTY HEFTY HEFTY
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I placed the endlink bolts to give me a little understeer... cause I ain't no hardcore drifter yo

Anyway, I was torquing down the nuts on the rear bar brackets and... BAM

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Sheared the end of the bolt right off. The recommended tq is 20 ft-lb and if ANYTHING I might have twisted the handle on the tq wrench to 25 at most, but I'm pretty sure it was set at 20 since I had torqued the rest of the nuts and checked the handle to make sure it was still set correctly. This is my luck


So today I had to run an errand for my boss, came back and jacked the car up to replace the radiator and found the result of driving with 3 bolts instead of 4 holding the sway bar mounts in place. The bracket bent and the bar is now rubbing against the frame.

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In that last picture you can see the other side of the bolt.... My plan is to drill the rest of the bolt out, buy a normal bolt and weld it in. Looks like I'm gonna have to drop the exhaust to fit a drill up there though.

Not sure but those bolts may just be pressed in. That's how ford does it. You can just tap them out and intall new ones. I doubt they were welded in place.

When I was installing my Racing Beat swaybars,the same shit happened to me with the rear bolts,except I managed to snap two of them(my Snap-on techwrench was set to 15 ft-lbs).Fixing it was easy,it's just removing the freshly installed sway bar and the exhaust that was a pain.

I'll give that a shot... didn't really occur to me so I never tried bangin on em

Did you have to drill them out or just punch them out?

By pressed in he is saying they're like wheel studs. You might be able to just hammer them out with a punch.

one heim joint on each bar made a noticable difference at the track.

Lol and by punch them out I meant using a hammer :gay:

Just for the sake of adjustability?

I tried to "punch" them out using a 2 pound mini sledge(big fucking hammer) and it would not budge,so I broke out the grinder,ground the stud flush and drilled a hole for a stud.

they are spot welded in place. broke one 6 years ago on the driver side then a few months ago i broke another on the passenger side, same car. cut stud flat with dremel and drilled out. replaced with nut and bolt.

it lets you relieve any preload on the bar.

hustler - what endlinks did you get? I want to do the same (just buy a pair for the whole car) so I obviously want some that are close to the same length as stock.

Antiseize is your friend. Besides the adjustability, the heim joint endlinks remove the preload and reduce the binding effects of the rubber, or poly, endlinks.

If you've lowered the car any significant amount, you'll want shorter endlinks. Some vendors sell short versions of their endlinks because of this. I had to dremel a portion of my RB links so the swaybar would have enough clearance.

Rick, how did you like the performance of them?
I JUST installed mine, i was less then SUPER enthused about them initially,
then the harder i took turns the more i became impressed, but i kind of expected more,
iunno
what did you think?
EDIT: Forgot, i mean the sways, not the links

I bought a pair of them from TDR. You only need one for each bar, regardless of what anyone tells you. The car was most stable over bumps judging from back-to-back sessions on the track. Its not a big deal, just nice to have the adjustability. You'll probably never notice the change. Its proably good for .00000001 seconds.

I have the FM bars on my Miata. Set on soft in front, and medium in the rear. It's perfectly neutral.

What kind of times do you run on the 3.1? My buddy took my car out there and ran a 2:39.8 on SM Hoosiers. He ran faster (caught an Evo8 that was running 2:36-2:37s), but didn't get the times for them.

I never had great expectations for them, but I picked them up because FM was having their moving sale and I felt I should do something to stiffen the car a bit before I effectively double the horsepower... I want to keep it looking stock so I don't want to slam it just yet. I haven't had the chance to push the car much yet, but from the few quick turns I've taken the car does respond better and is a bit flatter around corners. I'm satisfied with my purchase :bigtu:

PS ~ I ground down the bolt and drilled a new hole so all is well

Your stock front sway bar is worth money to the Factory Five Cobra kit car owners. It uses all mustang shit except for that one teeny factor.

How much are they worth? What are some boards I can sell them on?