[DeTomaso] Rear Camber Bar

[JDeRyke at aol.com]

In a message dated 6/23/08 10:51:00 AM, tbaranek at earthlink.net writes:

> I'm probably going to "bling" the rear camber bar. 1973 stock Pantera with 
> 17" Pantera East Campy clones. Any warning about installation, brands, etc...
> 
Bling here is an un-good move. The rear camber bar (also called the bay 
brace) works best by jamming into a welded pocket in each inner fender. The 
backside of this weldment is your upper rear shock mount so its substantial. The 
stock bar and all aluminum bars I've seen hang off two flimsy sheet metal tabs 
attached to the weldment. Thus all the forces attempt to transmit thru those two 
little sheet metal tabs with slotted holes. Except for Halls std plain-vanilla 
adjustable bay brace, sold by everyone now and made of square black steel.   
It alone has longer ends so forces transmit thru the entire weldment. The 
bolts only keep the bar-ends from popping out of their sockets. If you must 
make the bar look prettier than it needs to be, chrome it or buy virtually 
any of the fancy aluminum ones and immediately have a good TIG welder add about 
1-1/2" of barstock to each end so it too jams into the weldments as it should. 
Not doing either only wastes money to no purpose IMHO. FWIW, the solid 
aluminum bars are heavier than the steel Hall bar, too.

> I'm hoping for insight on how to load/unload the rear suspension so that I 
> can place the new one in WITHOUT changing the alignment or adding stress 
> during the installation or subsequent driving.
> 
Unless your Pantera is a virtually undriven example, the suspension is 
already distorted such that rear camber is far out of alignment, and due to metal 
sag, cannot be readjusted with stock lower a-arm shims. So loading or unloading 
the rear suspension with the camber bar is immaterial- likely the rear wheels 
need severe realignment anyway. If you have adjustable upper rear a-arms, its 
simple to do, and if not and the rear camber is way off, pre-loading with the 
bay brace is about the only way a satisfactory alignment can be gotten. 

If you do this, don't preload the bar too much all at once; give the metal a 
chance to return to its OEM position gradually over days or weeks of partial 
pre-loading. Getting in a hurry here can wrinkle metal or crack the paint on 
the rear outer fenders. On our '72, it took most of two weeks of 
gradually-increasing preload before the applied force brought the rear camber into specs- 
with stock a-arms. Good luck- J Deryke



**************
Gas prices getting you down? Search AOL Autos for 
fuel-efficient used cars.
      (http://autos.aol.com/used?ncid=aolaut00050000000007)