Front Sway Bar Brackets

I’m using a C5 Corvette suspension and sway bar. The brackets for the sway bar are large and only allow me to mount them in one place.

My concern is that they are too close together to allow proper performance. My only option would be to find smaller brackets and mount them farther out.

Before I do that, can anyone tell me if the placement of where they are now is a problem?

Any comments are appreciated.
 

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Steve they appear to be far enough apart to allow the bar to twist properly, The only concern that I cant tell from the photos is the mounting. The mounting must be rigid enough to not allow movement of the sway bar mounting points. The bushings you are using look like softer ones that will absorb some of that movement as long as the radiator upright assembly is strong enough. If you end up looking to change things or find it necessary,we use speedway engineering they can supply everything for a custom set up the bars come in many different lengths and lbs are rated on the length of the torque bars which allows for fine tuning while still keeping it simple......m
 
Thank you for the reply! The mounts are in steel and rock solid. The bushings aren’t rubber they’re poly and the bar is very rigid.

It’s a relief that the bar will work as is. I was worried that I’d need to rear it apart and redo it. I’d do that of course if needed, just didn’t want to.

Thanks again!
 
Steve,
Might want to ask Adern. The AP chassis recently on ebay has them mounted further out. (looks like same brackets in the pics) Just a suggestion. Nice chassis with a great turning radius, Scott
 
Unfortunately it seems like the only other place to put the mounting brackets is right where it goes from the inside of the car to the fender well area. I think you've got them about the only place they can go. Unless you can make the bushing bracket an "L" shape to move them farther out past that first bend on each side.
 

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Is your car from Active Power? I'd love to see more pics of your build. Do you have a build thread?

Hi Phillip, it is an Active Power Car. I just got the chassis in January and I haven’t done a build thread and probably won’t until I get a little further down the road.

All I’ve done so far is put on the front and rear suspension. I added the steering and rack and column also. This chassis came bare. Nothing on it, so I have to add everything. I think it came out pretty well so far, but like I said, I have a way to go.

I’ll try to add some pictures of what I’ve done so far.
 
Steve,
Might want to ask Adern. The AP chassis recently on ebay has them mounted further out. (looks like same brackets in the pics) Just a suggestion. Nice chassis with a great turning radius, Scott

Thanks Scott. I’ve asked Chris A LOT of questions. I don’t want to overstay my welcome.

I’ll take a look if it’s still on eBay.
 
Unfortunately it seems like the only other place to put the mounting brackets is right where it goes from the inside of the car to the fender well area. I think you've got them about the only place they can go. Unless you can make the bushing bracket an "L" shape to move them farther out past that first bend on each side.

I think I’m ok. I saw one of Chris’ cars and they were at the end of the inside of where the bar is now, but it looks like he used much smaller brackets. These are the brackets from the C5 Corvette and they’re pretty beefy.

Like I said before, this is basically a scratch build and it will take me a long time to finish it, but I’m having a blast doing it.
 
Here are a couple of pictures of my build so far. Don’t laugh, it’s only been a little while :)
 

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Looks like you're off to a great start. My dilemma is the wheels/tires in my planning for this. I know he sells 17's for the car and they work with the C5 brake rotors. But I really prefer the look of 15" wheels with the larger sidewall. I hope I can put slightly smaller brake rotors on his suspension. I'm going to call over there hopefully this spring and set up a time to head on over and take a look. I gotta make sure I can fit in one of these things. I am 6'-2" and 225 lbs. and I heard that can start to be close in some cars.
 
Looks like you're off to a great start. My dilemma is the wheels/tires in my planning for this. I know he sells 17's for the car and they work with the C5 brake rotors. But I really prefer the look of 15" wheels with the larger sidewall. I hope I can put slightly smaller brake rotors on his suspension. I'm going to call over there hopefully this spring and set up a time to head on over and take a look. I gotta make sure I can fit in one of these things. I am 6'-2" and 225 lbs. and I heard that can start to be close in some cars.


I'm 6'1' and 235. Its gonna be tight...
 
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Steve,


I'm sorry, but I have two concerns for your anti roll bar in the front.


First, I don't think you have anywhere near enough length between the ARB mount and where the bar is mounted on the lower A-arm. It appears to be less than 2 inches of an effective lever arm. I don't think that will give enough twist to serve as an anti roll bar. I would think that you would need several inches longitudinally between the mount on the chassis and the attachment on the A-arm. With the short separation you have, the bar will have to be very stiff (which leads to the next problems).


The second problem is the lateral distance between the ARB mount on the chassis and where the arm goes down to the A-arm. This is a cantilevered situation and you will get a vertical deflection of the ARB. This will just add to the wheel rate and will not give the anti roll moment that you expect to transfer load from one side to the other.


What you could do is to mount the ARB chassis mount on the outside (or inside if tire clearance is a problem) of the frame rail to reduce the cantilever effect. You could also put the ARB chassis mount further forward to give yourself a better lever arm between the chassis mount and the A-arm mount. I don't know how much tire clearance you would have, but you could find a place that would reduce the cantilever and give you a longer lever arm to the A-arm.


The third potential problem is the bushing you use in the chassis ARB mount. If it were rubber, you would get more compliance from that than the anti roll bar itself and that would be similar to the cantilever problem and would not contribute to anti roll. You said that it was not rubber but was poly, so perhaps it is not as much as an effect, but it still will have some compliance.


You will have to engineer the ARB stiffness and the kinematics of your lever arm and A-arm mount to get a ARB single-wheel stiffness of somewhere between 50% to 100% of the wheel rate.


I don't mean to be critical, I'm just trying to help you.


-Bob Woods
Tornado GT40 in Texas
 
Steve,
Regarding smaller 15inch wheels vs 17 or larger....... The stock corvette front/rear uprights are too tall to clear the smaller diameter wheels. Ask Adern about that as well. Just an FYI, Scott
 
Dr. Bob, thank you so much for your input. I was concerned enough about the position and location of the sway bar that I posted this question to begin with.

I welcome criticism, how else do you learn?

Since I am a “wrencher” and not and engineer, I understand about 50% of what you’re saying; but I understand enough to know that what I have isn’t going to work.

Opposed to explaining further the physics of why this sway bar instal may hinder performance more than improve it, I hope that you can shed some light on how I could better mount the sway bar.

Could you please explain your suggestion further?

In layman’s terms, are you saying to mount the sway bar below and forward of the lower control arm? That may eliminate the canteliver effect and improve the twist of the ARB.

Thank you so much for trying to help!

Steve
 
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Steve,
Regarding smaller 15inch wheels vs 17 or larger....... The stock corvette front/rear uprights are too tall to clear the smaller diameter wheels. Ask Adern about that as well. Just an FYI, Scott

Hi Scott. I know I need 17’s. The front brake calipers are too large for 15’s. Thanks for the comment!
 

Randy V

Moderator-Admin
Staff member
Admin
Lifetime Supporter
We’ve seen some sway bars mounted to the bottom side of the chassis and then linked to the lower control arm.

While I’m a huge proponent of the Corvette C5 suspension, I have to wonder just how crampt the footwells are in the AP cars.

Looking forward to your build thread Steve... Oh, and turn on the lights in there! LOL
 

Terry Oxandale

Skinny Man
Bob hit on some very good items (which I also questioned, but didn’t comment due to the fact that many times a photo misrepresents what is actually there).

His first point was that if you draw a centerline from the mounts and extend that out to the wheel, the distance of that centerline, to the mounting point on the lower control arm (as viewed from a vertical, above the chassis perspective, with suspension in the loaded position), you should have an effective arm length that promotes a twisting action on the bar, rather than a vertical bending motion on the bar. The shorter this arm length, the less twisting force is applied (desired), and the more bending force is applied (not desired). In an extreme example, the arm length is zero, and thus no twist takes place at all. BTW, has this bar been bent or changed any way from the OEM use? The reason I ask is that if Bob’s point here is valid, it would mean the OEM application was flawed to begin with, which I highly doubt unless the bar has been flatten somehow. If the bar is un-modified, than moving it further forward from the arm does no good because you'd lose any advantage by introducing angles into the bar's links.

His second point is completely independent of the first one, and that is the distance of the mounts (and this is assuming you have a viable arm length). Look at this from an exaggerated perspective of having both mounts within an inch of each other. In that case, regardless of the bushings used, you’d have a force that would try to rotate the bar at a point centered between the mounts (in essence, the system sees this as a single mount rather than two of them), with no twisting motion provided as desired. As the mounts are moved outward from that exaggerated position, there is a shift from the rotation force to a twisting force on the arms, until you reach the ideal position where both mounts are a distance from each other that equals the distance of the control arm attachment points from each other (again, this is ideal but not practical). Yours are somewhere in the middle of these two extremes.

His third point is that rubber mounts compound all the problems noted above.

Based on your original posting photos, could you not locate the mounts on the horizontal surface immediately under the current vertical plate?. This would allow them to be moved further out laterally (out to the welded vertical brace), where it appears the original OEM mounts may have been located?

What would also help folks here is to get some photos from directly above the assembly, with the assembly position as it would be on the road, as will as directly in front of it, and directly to the side of it (the three planes parallel to the ground, perpendicular, and laterally). The angles of the posted photos, of an unload suspension, make it hard to see if there really is a problem (or degree of problem) here.
 
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We’ve seen some sway bars mounted to the bottom side of the chassis and then linked to the lower control arm.

While I’m a huge proponent of the Corvette C5 suspension, I have to wonder just how crampt the footwells are in the AP cars.

Looking forward to your build thread Steve... Oh, and turn on the lights in there! LOL

Thanks Randy. The foot wells are very cramped. I’ll send some pics as the project progresses.
 
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