There was another thread going a month or so ago & I believe I asked this, but forgot to check back. On a car I'm restoring, I removed the original torsion bars & blasted & painted them, then reinstalled. BUT, I'm not sure if I got the sides correctly reinstalled. So my question is, should you always use NEW torsion bars on a resto, & if you re-use originals & mis-install them to where they are twisting the opposite direction, is there going to be a problem? Seems I heard years ago this is a big no-no!

There is nothing wrong with using old bars. I've done a lot of cars and never bought any new bars.

They are marked left and right though. If you crawl under the car and look at the bar end, you may have put the L or R in towards the back. If you can see just one is in its correct location you are good.

If you have the bars in the wrong side, hummmm. I would think you may have a future problem. If they have been in there wrong for a bunch of miles I'm not sure I would trust them if you put them back in the correct location.

There is a left and a right but there is no front or back. As long as the bars don't have any deep gouges, they should be fine. If there are some gouges, you can sand them out and reuse the bar.

Odd number is driver side.

You should be able to see the back of bar through torsion bar mount.

Thanks for the replies. The thing is, I'm not sure if the bars were correctly (correct sides) installed in the car before I even removed them, so I was a bit baffled when I went to re-install them. As I recall, I think there is a "L" & a "R" on the bars. Both ends of the T-bars looked the same to me as well - in other words, there is not a designated front & a rear to a T-bar.

The most likely time I have heard/read about of that a TB fails, is simply sitting static, parked. Not sure other then a guess why (most time?). If they break in a corner at high speed next to the wall, you likely are going to contact the wall. Would I ever enjoy having a TB break, absolutely not, Putting them in reverse to previous use, causing rotation inducing reverse stress fatigue issues, is a no no. But based on the chances of a TB failure happening ,based on the reports here over they years, especially with all the I suspect "nicked" with pliers TB's floating around, IMO you are more likely statistically to get and die from COVID then suffer a TB failure. The LCA doesn't really want to separate when moving forward during a TB failure, but it can, the main upset is the sudden collapse, alignment, loss of ride height and sudden infinite spring rate increase surprise for the driver, again, all bad and startling I suspect.

You would have to be paying a lot of attention to the torsion bars to notice that the ends are different. One end has a part number on it, the other end has a date code but most people are not going to notice that. Original bars had paint splotches on them but those are often gone after 50+ years of use. I think reusing old bars is just fine but there is no guarantee. Springs can be overloaded and ready to fail but you won't notice it by just looking. It is a good idea to roll used bars on ground to see if they are bent. I wouldn't use a bent bar, those should go to the scrap yard. It is common to see people trying to sell bent and/or damaged bars at swap meets though so look before you buy.

I got ripped off years ago by a guy selling torsion bars in a MP box. He said they were the 0.920 bars. I didn't have calipers with me and I didn't know the part number off the top of my head. Once I got them home I found out that he lied to me. That was back in the day when I just assumed that Mopar guys wouldn't steal from other Mopar guys. I eventually figured out that there are a number of crooks in the Mopar world who routinely lie and steal and cheat. Tough lesson to learn.

I guess you think T bars only rotate in one direction, hint they don't. they are constantly rotating in both directions when in use.

Kinda true but they are pre loaded in one direction for ride height so when the the front end rises completely it is still loaded in the same direction it doesn't reverse the bar.

Kinda not true. When installing them, the front control arms are down all the way, so when the T-Bars are installed & you let the car down, they are twisting in one direction only. Bring the suspension up off the ground again, they go to relaxed position. So after a life of twisting one way, if you go opposite on the twist, then it may be a different game. I don't know - it may not be an issue. It's almost a question for a metallurgist??

They support the weight of the car....in one direction.

Factory bars have a pre-set twist which is why you don't want to install them on the wrong side of the car. The pre-set twist is designed to improve the life of the bar. Most of the time the bars can't be installed on the wrong side anyway since the offset will be different. If you install them on the wrong side you usually would know it since the adjuster won't be in the right spot or the ride height will be off.

Some of the big oval track torsion bars did not have the hex offset so they could be installed on either side. If it was me I'd keep them on the same side as when they were originally installed but on a big race bar it might not matter too much.

That’s exactly what happened to me. This was back in the day I was driving my Challenger to work. I got to work and the car was fine. I came out to the parking lot to find the front end on the drivers side extremely low. It didn’t take long to figure out what it is. I actually drove it home like that but very very slowly.

The only broken torsion bars that I have seen have been on slant six cars in junkyards.

The only broken torsion bar(s) I've seen was on a 97ish Ford F150. It was in the middle of winter and the owner came in saying his shock was frozen. He said he parked with one tire on an incline and the shock "froze" in that position. We got the truck inside that evening and saw the broken bar. The next morning the truck looked strange. It wasn't sitting all cockeyed like it had the previous day. Sure enough, the second bar had broken during the night.