[DeTomaso] Sway Bar Mounts on A-arms

[MikeLDrew at aol.com]

In a message dated 5/9/10 15 23 28, JDeRyke at aol.com writes:


> Boyd, he's probably not familiar with Panteras which are definitely not
> race cars. He's right about the 1" sway bar causing problems, which if its 
> a
> solid 1" bar, will overwhelm the rear of the frame rails and twist them
> proportionally with the giant bar. This will eventually lead to cracking
> somewhere.
> 

>>>Has this ever happened in the history of Panteras?   I would suggest 
that it has not.

The vendors have sold hundreds and hundreds of 1-inch swaybars and a lot of 
people here are using them.   Your description makes it sound like they 
would tear the back of the car to pieces.   The worst-case scenario MIGHT be 
breaking an A-arm mount, I think.   The only failure mode I personally know of 
is hollow sway bars snapping under racetrack use.   

When Jack and I tested swaybars together with Larry Stock in the early 
1990s, we found that performance went down, not up, when we moved from the Euro 
GTS 7/8 bar to the 1-inch bar.   However, that car didn't have the benefit 
of a chassis stiffening kit.   It would be interesting to repeat that 
experiment now--it wouldn't surprise me if the results were quite different today, 
if the chassis was appropriately stiffened.

In any case, I still maintain that dollar for dollar, the single best 
improvement you can make to a Pantera is to ditch the stock 3/4 rear bar and 
replace it with a 7/8 bar.   The front bar is already 7/8 and can be safely left 
alone.   I don't think that the improvements associated with changing both 
bars to 1-inch are worth the effort or cost.

And Boyd, your mechanic is either clueless, or you're misunderstanding him 
when you say that he told you that installing a sway bar that is 1/8 of an 
inch larger than the factory option bar would be dangerous and make the car 
leap off the road when it encountered a bump.   That's a laughable idea.

Like Jack, I highly recommend the Spherebar mounts for the A-arms.   They 
really do smooth out the swaybar action on the suspension.   It's perhaps not 
as good as a true heim system, but it's probably 95% as good, without all 
the maintenance, complexities, inconvenience and cost of a true heim system.

Mike