Swaybar Disconnects - Ford Raptor

[BigJ]

AII (or anyone else), do my arrows look right for removal?

 

[A.I.I.Raciing]

Should be as simple as removing the 3 bolts on each side. 10 minutes tops

Me personally, I would put the 2 main bolts back into the frame just for extra bolts if ever needed when in the dezert. These bolts dont rattle around and are always there

 

[The Tank]

THE TANK: That is a car, way different COG.

had nothing to do with body roll, car was set up for drag racing. it was something with the way the car followed the road.

 

[Bojangles]

Just now saw this thread for the 1st time...

I removed my swaybar a few weeks ago. Doesn't feel too different on-road, seems a bit "squishier" when you go side-to-side quickly with the wheel if that makes any sense to yous-guys

Off-road it's much nicer without it. Hell, you can even feel the difference in the independence up front just by taking a speedbump at an angle with just a touch of speed.

Disconnects would be cool I guess, but that's the only way mine is ever going back on.

 

[Xjrguy]

I hope you guys never get into a jam on the road and have an insurance inspector look at the truck after the fact.

 

[Bojangles]

I hope you guys never get into a jam on the road and have an insurance inspector look at the truck after the fact.

weenie

 

[MagicMtnDan]

Stabilizer bars are part of a car's suspension system. They are sometimes also called anti-sway bars or anti-roll bars. Their purpose in life is to try to keep the car's body from "rolling" in a sharp turn.

Think about what happens to a car in a sharp turn. If you are inside the car, you know that your body gets pulled toward the outside of the turn. The same thing is happening to all the parts of the car. So the part of the car on the outside of the turn gets pushed down toward the road and the part of the car on the inside of the turn rises up. In other words, the body of the car "rolls" 10 or 20 or 30 degrees toward the outside of the turn. If you take a turn fast enough, the tires on the inside of the turn actually rise off the road and the car flips over.

Roll is bad. It tends to put more weight on the outside tires and less weigh on the inside tires, reducing traction. It also messes up steering. What you would like is for the body of the car to remain flat through a turn so that the weight stays distributed evenly on all four tires.

Stabilizer bars provide a dampening function and structural support.

A stabilizer bar tries to keep the car's body flat by moving force from one side of the body to another. To picture how a stabilizer bar works, imagine a metal rod that is an inch or two (2 to 5 cm) in diameter. If your front tires are 5 feet (1.6 meters) apart, make the rod about 4 feet long. Attach the rod to the frame of the car in front of the front tires, but attach it with bushings in such a way that it can rotate. Now attach arms from the rod to the front suspension member on both sides.

When you go into a turn now, the front suspension member of the outside of the turn gets pushed upward. The arm of the sway bar gets pushed upward, and this applies torsion to the rod. The torsion them moves the arm at the other end of the rod, and this causes the suspension on the other side of the car to compress as well. The car's body tends to stay flat in the turn.

If you don't have a stabilizer bar, you tend to have a lot of trouble with body roll in a turn. If you have too much stabilizer bar, you tend to lose independence between the suspension members on both sides of the car. When one wheel hits a bump, the stabilizer bar transmits the bump to the other side of the car as well, which is not what you want. The ideal is to find a setting that reduces body roll but does not hurt the independence of the tires.

Source: http://auto.howstuffworks.com/question432.htm

 

[Xjrguy]

weenie

Cross another one off my Kwanzaa List.

 

[BigJ]

I hope you guys never get into a jam on the road and have an insurance inspector look at the truck after the fact.

The same thing can (and has) been said about engines more powerful than stock. Maybe you wouldn't have spun out if you didn't add that CAI... after all it added more horsepower than came from the factory and the car wasn't designed for that horsepower...

Not saying you should run out and do this. It makes me nervous too. But the "insurance" argument isn't really one that holds up in my experience.

In looking at this more, its not as straight forward as it sounds to remove (although its not at all complicated either). The bolt going thru the lower arm is a ball joint. You'll need some sort of pry bar to be able to leverage against it as you unscrew the nuts (18mm). Otherwise the ball will just spin with the nut inside the joint after it loosens a bit.

Also there's a shield of some sort on the driver side (you can kind of see it in my pic above). You first will need to remove the nut (15mm) holding the shield, remove the shield or tweak it off the bolt and out of the way, then unscrew the second nut (15mm) holding the bracket on. The passenger side has no shield to worry about and only requires removal of two nuts (15mm).

 

[Bojangles]

If you have too much stabilizer bar, you tend to lose independence between the suspension members on both sides of the car. When one wheel hits a bump, the stabilizer bar transmits the bump to the other side of the car as well, which is not what you want.

Exactly!
:bart: