Stiffening The Rear Sway Bar

[altezzaclub]

Thanks Rob, I'll let you know how it goes-

 

Do you have a spare head I can borrow for a couple of months?? I want to dummy up the SU carbs and make a filter box...

 

Mind you, we should wander down to the kahnacross anyway... where abouts is it being held?

[altezzaclub]

Ok, picked up the Celica bar this aftertnoon. It's an exact copy, which suggests the whole rear end will probably fit a KE70. It looked exactly the same, complete with the old style rear-door diff.

 

It was an A60 I think, with the pop-up headlights, but I forgot to check the VIN code. There are a stack of Celicas & Corollas at Great Western in Orange.

 

It is 15mm in diameter, compared to the stock 13mm.

Edited September 15, 2009 by altezzaclub

[altezzaclub]

I whipped the stock one off and set up a test bench. Screwed down one mount and grabbed a straight-edge to measure from, and loaded a bucket with bricks as a weight. If anyone needs it, I can weigh the bricks...

 

Anyway, the stock bar deflected 30mm from unweighted to weighted, and the Celica one deflected 20mm under the same conditions. Getting round figures suprised me, but they were 30 & 20, not 18 and 32...

 

So I'll let the girls in the family drive it for a day or two without a sway bar then bolt on the Celica one and see if anyone can notice the difference...

[rob83ke70]

they don't drive like my kylie does i hope.... kylie is going to be sideways everywhere when i put the rear swaybar back in the ke55 :lolcry: (either tomorrow or thursday depending on how slow orange wheel alignments are with my mount bushes)

 

Robert.

[philbey]

Wicked, nothing like a bit of backyard shed engineering.

[altezzaclub]

...and Mr Philbey, the 33% change in deflection I observed agrees neatly with the change in thickness. 13mmdiam is 530sqmm and 15mm diam is 705sqmm, and surprisingly enough 705-530=175, which is a 33% increase. I like it when engineering science works!

 

I'll bolt it on tomorrow night..

[philbey]

I like it when engineering science works!

 

So do I - it makes my job so much harder when it doesn't....

[Reaper_Mobb]

I hope you don't mean welding another swaybar to the original one Reaper?

 

Sway bars are infact springs. Which are made from spring steel. If you go welding it with anything other than Stainless rods and don't temper it. it will become brittle from the heat and eventually crack.

 

As for clipping a second swaybar in. apart from being a bit crude, it has worked before. Just make sure what ever you use to hold the two together is plenty strong.

 

you use to be able to get rods (arc only i think) that would run of car battery and jumper leads that where made for welding spring steel.... i could be wrong (its not my forty) but why can't this be used?

[SLO-030]

I can't see it doing your battery any good. but whenever spring steel is welded at work its always with Diamond 5000S rods (stainless). after its been welded its run thru a tempering chamber. only after that is it suitable to be used as a spring.

[philbey]

Second that - It's the tempering that is the problem with the spring, no matter what you weld with, you wont get it to work without the proper heat treatment.

[Reaper_Mobb]

I can't see it doing your battery any good. but whenever spring steel is welded at work its always with Diamond 5000S rods (stainless). after its been welded its run thru a tempering chamber. only after that is it suitable to be used as a spring.

 

oh ok cool. yeah its was only for emergency (something breaks in car, weld with jumper leads and batters then limp back to civilisation)