Racing Beat Front Swaybar - Temporarily running with stock brackets?
 

Hi everyone,

Just purchased a Racing Beat Tubular Front Swaybar and as I was installing it on the car, I realized that it was supposed to come with new brackets/bushings as well to mount it to the subframe on each side of the car. I went ahead and ordered some from Racing Beat today, but I'm not sure if it'll make it here on time for a test and tune I have this Friday.

Have any of you guys run the FSB with the stock brackets and trimmed or removed the inner bushings? I've heard that the majority of the issues lies with preloading and/or binding the swaybar with a bushing too tight, but if I trimmed the inside of the stock bushing or removed it completely, would it be okay to run temporarily? I would expect it to make some noise if it were removed completely, but I would be willing to live with it if functionality wouldn't be affected. Obviously if safety becomes an issue then I have no problem putting the stock bar back on.

Thanks!

-Kris

My RB hollow bar came with bushings and brackets. The RB blocks are a must have.

I ran Racing Beat front and rear swaybars for over 40,000 miles before I added aftermarket endlinks.

You'll start bending and tearing up your chassis brackets if you take the bushings out completely, I'd wouldn't recommend it. Plus it would give you some really weird characteristics, doing nothing for a split second until the slack is taken up.

You could try cutting up the stock bushings, you're trying to put a larger round hole in a fairly thin rubber bushing, I wouldn't think it'll happen easily.

I'd think it'd be easier to test and tune the rest of your setup with a stock sway and add the Racing Beat unit when you have the proper parts.

Run the stock sways. I'm hoping you also ordered the blocks when you ordered the brackets and bushings. Because unless you're running pretty stiff springs you risk breaking the stock sway bar brackets.

Ordered and installed the RB brackets last weekend.

I'm currently running 9k front/6k rear with the RB Front tubular sway and OEM rear. Hopefully it'll be okay to run until I can save up for the heavy duty swaybar brackets.

Quick question about adjusting the 949 endlinks - I found that the least resistance felt through the torque of my hand was essentially when the endlinks were shortened all the way. I torqued it with the car on the ground and don't hear any noise. Is there any particular way to know if that's the right setting? I've also heard it can change your ride height if not adjusted properly. Would it be pretty obvious if that were the case?

Somewhere on the internet emillio has a really nice couple paragraphs of how to set the length correctly that covers all angles.

I have broken those front mounts with an aftermarket front swaybar, it was a real PITA to fix!

I'm at about 15k miles with my tubular front racing beat sway bar. I am using 145k mile OE mounting points with the racing beat poly bushings/brackets/endlinks and no reinforcing blocks. No breakage yet, but I do not track the car, only autocross.

Print this off and keep it with your records: http://949racing.com/server/EndLink_Instructions.pdf

I'd think that AX would be more stressful on the bracket due to constant weight shift.