With the suspension all mounted it was time to mount the rear anti-roll bar. I had previously decided to mount the drop link into the inner end of the toe adjuster. So I quickly whipped that off, drilled and tapped it 5/16 UNF.Yes, I know, its imperial but its a race car, all race cars are imperial (even if it does mean I get confused over dimensions)! Then I bolted on a rose joint to the blade and the adjuster to see how long the drop link needed to be.
From the picture you can see that the rose joints need to be shortened to get the blade angle at 90 degrees. I then cut the rose joints to length, although these may need to be shortened further when everything is at ride height, and turned up the drop links.
As both end of the drop link are right hand threads I milled a small flat onto the drop link to help tighten it all up, although you really should put a flat on anyway with one left hand and one right hand but you can normally get away with it! Below is the final article. Now I know its not quite 90 degrees, but until the car is at ride height, remember it is still on stands 2 foot i the air, I cant really get this perfectly set. So the plan is to adjust, read cut to length, the drop links once its all on the floor. they will have to come off to set the car up anyway, but I thought if I had the base parts made that would mean it would be a lot easier/quicker to do at the end.
The final task on the bar was to stop it moving across the car and binding up. Now a lot of people weld washers to the bar across the mounts to stop it moving, nothing wrong with this, but they do it from one mount to the other. This is actually not super, as it causes the bar to bind up if the chassis flexes one iota. Now, if you can guarantee your chassis doesnt flex at all then fair enough, but I doubt that very much, so these washers need to be placed across a SINGLE mount. This allows the bar to slide in one of the bearings when the chassis flexes and not bind up.
Because I have welded ends onto the bar to mount the blades, I needed to make split washers to get them onto the bar. You can see below the general idea. I have left a small gap so the bar can float a small amount in the bush, before it rubs on the washer. Otherwise it all gets a little close and could easily cause extra friction in the mounting if the washers was rubbing the bush the whole time.
Tags: Suspension
