Splined front sway bar set up for Mopars

Some people have asked, so here are some pics of the splined front sway bar set up on the Valiant. Obviously it takes some surgery on the k frame. I can take more pics if needed...

Details?

I've seen similar components at Speedway,, but never scoped it out enough to decide what might work.

Nice work too

Thats all the work of Tim Werner & AndyF (Finkbinder). I'm guessing the splined arm was bent in the middle to line up with the lower control arm. Definately helps with tire clearance. A friend of mine did something similar years ago on a Dart, as thats what they did on the kit/ Nascar cars.

I went perusing Speedway, no splined sway bar stuff like they used to have. Guess it's been a while since I thought about it.

Still a nice setup you have.

If you sign up for the Mopax email list, Tim still lurks there. He was pretty good about answering questions about the car when I asked for info during my time owning it.

https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/mopax/info

Off-road buggy/rock crawler build sites have quite a bit of what one would need to do a splined swaybar. I'd think between Anti-rock and Poly Performance you could pull together most of what you'd need to get one on a car.

That looks clean and straight forward. If i can make out the geometry from the two posted pics, it terminates inside of the strut bar, which still remains the limiting point in tire width/backspace/turning angle, and not the sway bar bent lever?

It appears to be a hollow bar, 48 or 49 spline, and do you you know thew major/bearing diameter, and overall width, off hand?

I like the solution.

Coleman racing has a wide range of these also.

sway-away

Different Speedway. Try looking up Speedway Engineering. I'm pretty sur that's who I bought tube and arms from. There's a couple of other sources as well, but that's a good one. On the '67 to 72? K it should work out in the stock mounting locations. Probably also for the early K. My recolection is Project V uses a 73 K which had a sway bar through it more like the kit cars did.

The hard part is getting the arm angle bent. The nice thing is once done, the geometry is set. Then changing rates is a matter of swapping tubes to different wall thickness.

Mine's not installed, its been on the todo list for too many years, but other stuff gets in the way (priorities).

Nah, I saw it at Speedway Motors, they still have a tiny bit of it there. They do a lot of circle track stuff, carry AFCO and Landrum items. But I think they stopped doing oval track stuff when Bill died.

I did see the Speedway Engineering site while I was looking this past few days. Ebay has a lot of surplus Nascar stuff too.

Yeah I remember that project. Tim did about 95% of the fab work on that splined bar setup. I just gave him a few ideas on how to do it and I think I machined up the bushings that hold the bar on each end.

Over the years that I worked with Tim he went thru a bunch of different bar designs on that car. The splined bar is just the logical place to end up after trying most everything else. Once you have a splined bar design then you can easily change the roll rate without spending a ton of money for custom bent bars.

I'd like to see splined sway bars offered for our cars... front and rear, all bodies A,B,E, etc. One potential problem for the front, whereby the bar passes through the K-frame, is the diameter... 1-1/4" ~ 1-5/16" gets to be pretty tight ... especially if the k-frame is the least bit slightly bent/crushed up... requires stretching the opening... not easy!... I've had to do it recently (installing a Firm Feel 1-1/4 hollow front sway bar... actually measures ~1-5/16" (larger than my solid 1-1/4 bar).

Seems like you could sell a kit with the parts needed to weld it onto a k frame, but how many people would actually buy it?

If the price is close to what it would cost to put a front blade bar on my 911 it will be high. Yes this is not a Porsche but a factory GT3 front 5 way bar is $500 and a blade bar is $1650. Other aftermarket bars are about $500 also so is the cost benefit there. I would think only if your going for the last 1/10th at the nationals to justify the cost. This is NASCAR territory here and cost to go with it but if the cost was less. Maybe

Pretty limited market, I think. How many people want to build a car like The Red Brick?

for the right price, maybe

Limited market, yes somewhat. Expensive, for a retail proposition, yes, but not for a home brewed set up. The parts could be pulled together for around $350-400. Splined bar-$150, end links-$100, attaching hardware-$50, bushings-$25, mounting hardware-$25. So, $700-800 retail, which tells me you won't sell many to your basic grassroots enthusiast, but for a fab shop that builds complete cars, it could be a nice option that some may upgrade to.

Due to limits on K frame through holes, it may need to either A)section the K have a pass through tube welded to the remaining K to allow up to 2" access, or B) move it further forward to the front of the K. Since tube diameters and wall thickness can be varied, the longer link arms required for a forward mount can be overcome with larger bar diameter, unlike stock bar selections with limited diameters. You would be adding a small amount of weight and deflection.

I've thought about doing this for sometime, but its not a high priority for my personal use and I've already laid out the limitations of the retail side. I'm also laying out adaptations for GM upper control arms too, but it also has similar retail limitations within a limited market.

Shroeder? Bars, they do custom, little pricy.

For you boys with QA1 front ends, it's an easy modification. Just order the correct width bar and arms, you are off and running. No mods needed.

http://www.colemanracing.com/Sway-Bar-1-14-x-48-Spline-P3795.aspx

Hows that stuff holding up? How many miles do you have on the set up?

I have the first one off the assembly line so I can't really speak for everyone. Mine was still in R&D form so I made a few tweaks to the lower controls and PS box angle. I changed all the bolts to higher grade and added some some material to each front mounting point so I could through bolt it to the frame rail. We noticed some movement under HEAVY usage (road course and autocross). Quality is good, all the welds, material and coating have held up great. I probably have 3000-4000 miles on it, but who's counting?! One day at the track is worth that!