Sway Bar yes or no

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[QWellUOTE="72bluNblu, post: 1973331559, member: 8182"]The addco 67-72 Addco sway bar uses the stock 67-72 sway bar tab location. It will not work with the QA1 LCA’s.[/QUOTE]

Crap, I got off track, wrote your info down for the Hotchkis and Hellwig and i dunno, was "shopping" and lost focus I guess. So it looks like the QA-1 mount tabs are further inboard than on factory LCA's right?
 
72bluNblu said:
The addco 67-72 Addco sway bar uses the stock 67-72 sway bar tab location. It will not work with the QA1 LCA’s.
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Funny, I called Summit for part number assurance on ANY sway bar, he gave me QA1, talked to QA1, guy said no sway bar will work on QA1 LCA's without buying the QA1 K member, but I get what your saying, the Hellwig or Hotchkis are both "close enough" I don't suppose you know the Hotchkis PN? Thanks for your help!
 
dano said:
With the QA1 lower control arms, are there any mounting tabs for a bar? If so are they for the 72-down bar or the 73-up? This will correlate to what K-Frame you have for mounting.

Below is my 69 with an Addco bar and 72-down stock arms. It has a small "dog leg" in it to clear lock to lock. I guess it will depend on the bar, wheel offset and wire width. This is a 17x7 with a 215 wide tire.

View attachment 1715681682
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Dano, Can you please verify what the eye to eye opening length is and a picture off the addaco mounting location me and Rustyratrod been having discussions over the early a versus the later.
 
abodyjoe said:
what are you doing with the car?

i can tell you on our dart i have been running 1" bars for years with no swap bar pretty much because i was just too lazy to buy and install one. thought the car handled pretty well and stayed pretty flat in corners.. early in 2020 i finally broke down and bought a hellwig 5906 (1 1/8") sway bar for it and installed it. the difference was very noticeable.. the car is a lot flatter in corners now. just feels a lot better to me.. i'm not sure that piacular bar will fit your car with the qa1 lower arms.

View attachment 1715681801

View attachment 1715681802

View attachment 1715681803
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Mean lookin ride, nice job.
 
I8NEMO said:
Funny, I called Summit for part number assurance on ANY sway bar, he gave me QA1, talked to QA1, guy said no sway bar will work on QA1 LCA's without buying the QA1 K member, but I get what your saying, the Hellwig or Hotchkis are both "close enough" I don't suppose you know the Hotchkis PN? Thanks for your help!
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The guy is wrong. I have gone around more than once with other people here saying the same thing. They are also wrong. The tab location on the QA1 LCA’s is basically the same as on the factory 73+ LCA’s with tabs. My Duster has a 73+ Hotchkis bar with the QA1’s and it fits great. I had to shorten the end links like I already mentioned because of the profile height difference, but the lateral location is the same. The 67-72 Hotchkis bar uses the same tab location as the 73+ hotchkis bar (I have both, with one for each of my A’s). Which means, it also fits. This is very close to the same as the Hellwig 55917 bar. If you think about that, it means all should work with the QA1 LCA’s if you’re willing to alter the end links.

But you don’t have to take my word for it, because other members have now DONE IT. This thread addresses all the claims made about them not fitting, and all the pictures from members that have since shown that it works just fine. As in, the tabs are located just as accurately for those bars as anything factory ever was. The finished examples are on the later pages.

Hotchkis TVS with QA1 lower control arms

Part number for the Hotchkis bar is 22385F.
 
Talked to Hotchkis, guy's been around the block, his brother has a 68 Barracuda with the HSS 22385F front sway bar but factory LCA's. He did say that if the QA! LCA mount tabs are within about 1/2" of where they need to be, the connector rods can make up some difference makes sense. 72bluNblu sounds like he's on this and pretty sure, I'm leaning towards ordering direct from Hotchkis, they're 1 state away, $311 vs $327 ish from Summit. Units are back ordered, Summit needs a bunch but private sales unofficially take some precedence, could ship by end of the month. Decisions Decisions
72bluNblu said:
The guy is wrong. I have gone around more than once with other people here saying the same thing. They are also wrong. The tab location on the QA1 LCA’s is basically the same as on the factory 73+ LCA’s with tabs. My Duster has a 73+ Hotchkis bar with the QA1’s and it fits great. I had to shorten the end links like I already mentioned because of the profile height difference, but the lateral location is the same. The 67-72 Hotchkis bar uses the same tab location as the 73+ hotchkis bar (I have both, with one for each of my A’s). Which means, it also fits. This is very close to the same as the Hellwig 55917 bar. If you think about that, it means all should work with the QA1 LCA’s if you’re willing to alter the end links.

But you don’t have to take my word for it, because other members have now DONE IT. This thread addresses all the claims made about them not fitting, and all the pictures from members that have since shown that it works just fine. As in, the tabs are located just as accurately for those bars as anything factory ever was. The finished examples are on the later pages.

Hotchkis TVS with QA1 lower control arms

Part number for the Hotchkis bar is 22385F.
Click to expand...
Awesome, I didn't mean to question your experience here in fact I have the HSS 22385F queued up and ready to purchase direct from Hotchkis when I saw your reply. As much as I hate rabbit holes I'm awfully good at creating them, I was out in the shop, with tires on the ground I dropped 1/2" all thread through to mount tabs to floor kinda squared them and measured "eye to eye", gave me something to do. lol. Hotchkis direct is good for me, 1 state away, they are on B.O. but the guy said single parties take precedence over larger distributor orders to a degree I know Summit BO'd a bunch so looks like end of month I may have it. Much appreciate your help
 
67/6barracuda said:
Dano, Can you please verify what the eye to eye opening length is and a picture off the addaco mounting location me and Rustyratrod been having discussions over the early a versus the later.
Click to expand...

I really don't know what your asking here. There are two mounting locations for the Addco bar, the stock and the "L" bracket they send that mounts to the sock location. Eye to eye location, like a diameter or location of the hole in relation to the bracket? PM me if need be.
 
72bluNblu said:
The addco 67-72 Addco sway bar uses the stock 67-72 sway bar tab location. It will not work with the QA1 LCA’s.
Click to expand...

And if you look at my picture they don't sit the bar very parallel to the body. I hate the way its lines up but if I bring it parallel, the eyes are off. I even tried to put the bar int eh stock location and that moved it too far forward. I might look into the Hotchkis bar.
 
I8NEMO said:
Talked to Hotchkis, guy's been around the block, his brother has a 68 Barracuda with the HSS 22385F front sway bar but factory LCA's. He did say that if the QA! LCA mount tabs are within about 1/2" of where they need to be, the connector rods can make up some difference makes sense. 72bluNblu sounds like he's on this and pretty sure, I'm leaning towards ordering direct from Hotchkis, they're 1 state away, $311 vs $327 ish from Summit. Units are back ordered, Summit needs a bunch but private sales unofficially take some precedence, could ship by end of the month. Decisions Decisions

Awesome, I didn't mean to question your experience here in fact I have the HSS 22385F queued up and ready to purchase direct from Hotchkis when I saw your reply. As much as I hate rabbit holes I'm awfully good at creating them, I was out in the shop, with tires on the ground I dropped 1/2" all thread through to mount tabs to floor kinda squared them and measured "eye to eye", gave me something to do. lol. Hotchkis direct is good for me, 1 state away, they are on B.O. but the guy said single parties take precedence over larger distributor orders to a degree I know Summit BO'd a bunch so looks like end of month I may have it. Much appreciate your help
Click to expand...

approx. 36 3/4"...Hotchkis is ordered

QA1 eye to eye 2 (1).jpg


QA1 eye to eye 2 (2).jpg
 
I8NEMO said:
Talked to Hotchkis, guy's been around the block, his brother has a 68 Barracuda with the HSS 22385F front sway bar but factory LCA's. He did say that if the QA! LCA mount tabs are within about 1/2" of where they need to be, the connector rods can make up some difference makes sense. 72bluNblu sounds like he's on this and pretty sure, I'm leaning towards ordering direct from Hotchkis, they're 1 state away, $311 vs $327 ish from Summit. Units are back ordered, Summit needs a bunch but private sales unofficially take some precedence, could ship by end of the month. Decisions Decisions

Awesome, I didn't mean to question your experience here in fact I have the HSS 22385F queued up and ready to purchase direct from Hotchkis when I saw your reply. As much as I hate rabbit holes I'm awfully good at creating them, I was out in the shop, with tires on the ground I dropped 1/2" all thread through to mount tabs to floor kinda squared them and measured "eye to eye", gave me something to do. lol. Hotchkis direct is good for me, 1 state away, they are on B.O. but the guy said single parties take precedence over larger distributor orders to a degree I know Summit BO'd a bunch so looks like end of month I may have it. Much appreciate your help
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No worries man, I'm just trying to help.

I just get frustrated by the lack of imagination of some people, and if you look at the other thread you can see that this has been brought up before with the same naysayers. The LCA is less than 13" long pivot to ball joint, and it has quite a few visual markers to identify locations that are the same on ALL of the LCA's. Not to mention, only a few places that are actually large enough and far enough away from the strut rods and adjuster holes to mount a sway bar tab. So you can literally just look at the LCA, look at the pictures in the instructions from Hotchkis, Hellwig, etc , and realize that the tabs are less than a 1/2" from where QA1 tabs are laterally. They have to be, because in that central tab location if the tabs move a 1/2" outboard they'll hit the strut rod, and if they move a 1/2" inboard they'll interfere with the torsion bar adjuster hole. They can't be off by that much. The QA1's look different because of their tubular construction, but the torsion bar adjusters and strut rods are in the same exact place.

The other thing is sway bar end links use large bushings. They provide for a ton of misalignment. Yes, in theory all of it needs to be at perfect right angles and parallel. But sway bar end link locations are not a precision deal. If you look at aftermarket sway bars on these cars even the ones that are being used in their intended application are rarely perfect. In fact, some of them (like the addco) are frequently more out of shape than what you get using the QA1's. It's so close I would happily wager it's within the factory tolerances for the sway bar tab locations, so I really do not understand the argument that those bars won't work with the QA1. From QA1 I understand it, they're trying to sell more K frames and limit any liability/complaints. But from everyone else I don't get it. It's clear it works just fine.

dano said:
And if you look at my picture they don't sit the bar very parallel to the body. I hate the way its lines up but if I bring it parallel, the eyes are off. I even tried to put the bar int eh stock location and that moved it too far forward. I might look into the Hotchkis bar.
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Yeah the addco's work, but it's clear that the cheaper price comes at the expense of quality. Especially in the mounting hardware. The Hotchkis and Hellwig bars are expensive, but have much better quality and fit.
 
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72bluNblu said:
Yeah the addco's work, but it's clear that the cheaper price comes at the expense of quality. Especially in the mounting hardware. The Hotchkis and Hellwig bars are expensive, but have much better quality and fit.
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I think I bough it in 1997ish. Back when they were the only option.
 
dano said:
I think I bough it in 1997ish. Back when they were the only option.
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Isn't it awesome how much aftermarket stuff is available now?

Even in '08 when I bought my Challenger Firm Feel was pretty much the only source for upgraded handling parts. There were a couple of other minor players (like CAP, which was bought out by QA1 and where the tubular LCA design came from) but that was about it. Now you can get everything!
 
72bluNblu said:
No worries man, I'm just trying to help.

I just get frustrated by the lack of imagination of some people, and if you look at the other thread you can see that this has been brought up before with the same naysayers. The LCA is less than 13" long pivot to ball joint, and it has quite a few visual markers to identify locations that are the same on ALL of the LCA's. Not to mention, only a few places that are actually large enough and far enough away from the strut rods and adjuster holes to mount a sway bar tab. So you can literally just look at the LCA, look at the pictures in the instructions from Hotchkis, Hellwig, etc , and realize that the tabs are less than a 1/2" from where QA1 tabs are laterally. They have to be, because in that central tab location if the tabs move a 1/2" outboard they'll hit the strut rod, and if they move a 1/2" inboard they'll interfere with the torsion bar adjuster hole. They can't be off by that much. The QA1's look different because of their tubular construction, but the torsion bar adjusters and strut rods are in the same exact place.

The other thing is sway bar end links use large bushings. They provide for a ton of misalignment. Yes, in theory all of it needs to be at perfect right angles and parallel. But sway bar end link locations are not a precision deal. If you look at aftermarket sway bars on these cars even the ones that are being used in their intended application are rarely perfect. In fact, some of them (like the addco) are frequently more out of shape than what you get using the QA1's. It's so close I would happily wager it's within the factory tolerances for the sway bar tab locations, so I really do not understand the argument that those bars won't work with the QA1. From QA1 I understand it, they're trying to sell more K frames and limit any liability/complaints. But from everyone else I don't get it. It's clear it works just fine.



Yeah the addco's work, but it's clear that the cheaper price comes at the expense of quality. Especially in the mounting hardware. The Hotchkis and Hellwig bars are expensive, but have much better quality and fit.
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Everything you've said makes sense. I wondered about the availability of space myself just looking at everything in the way/ limitations. And yes, the aftermarket today is a wonderful thing. I remember my brother searching for aluminum wheels for his 76 Power Wagon back in the mid 90s I guess, not much luck so he changed the hubs over to GM 6 lug to get the wheels.
Thanks much for sharing your expertise.
 
The end links look like a bolt/sleeve arrangement so shortening looks simple. How much length did you end up cutting off?
 
Also lets keep this fire going... who wants to share what they know about rear sway bars!!!! lol. I've read other posts, and saw disagreements over stock ride height vs lowered but no specifics to rear sway bars relating to lowered cars.

If these are bolt in I'll wait, if there is fab work I need to consider it it now.

68 Barracuda,
Here's variables:
  • Rear leaf springs moved inboard under frame
  • Factory 8.75" Diff shortened 7/8" off each end
  • New 383 leaf springs "factory ride height" dearched 1.5"
  • 1" lowering block
 
I8NEMO said:
Im revisiting the idea of a sway bar. Now, im probably a year or 2 away from finished paint, assembly and driving. My car is a 68 Notch with a fresh 340. Ive upgraded the front with QA1 LCA and POL UCA including a 2" drop spindle with DBs. I assume with a lower stance, a sway bar would help potential tire rub in turning/ curb situations. Would you A: drive the car first and do a sway bar after, or B: go ahead and install one now?

Thanks much
Tim
Click to expand...
Definitely YES, it is much easier on your headers and any other pipe, it also improves your front suspension stability and many more handling improvements. Go with A
 
I8NEMO said:
The end links look like a bolt/sleeve arrangement so shortening looks simple. How much length did you end up cutting off?
Click to expand...

It was actually substantial, maybe an inch and a half? These pictures weren't intended to show the end link length, but you can see the difference between them. Also, I didn't cut the end links. As you said they're a bolt and sleeve arrangement and the unthreaded section of the bolt in the middle means you can't really cut the threaded end down and still have enough threads. So I used a different length bolt and a completely different sleeve as well. I may have shortened mine a smidge too much though, as you can see the leg of the sway bar isn't quite parallel to the strut rod.

img_4373-jpg.jpg


img_4412-jpg.jpg


I8NEMO said:
Also lets keep this fire going... who wants to share what they know about rear sway bars!!!! lol. I've read other posts, and saw disagreements over stock ride height vs lowered but no specifics to rear sway bars relating to lowered cars.

If these are bolt in I'll wait, if there is fab work I need to consider it it now.

68 Barracuda,
Here's variables:
  • Rear leaf springs moved inboard under frame
  • Factory 8.75" Diff shortened 7/8" off each end
  • New 383 leaf springs "factory ride height" dearched 1.5"
  • 1" lowering block
Click to expand...

First off I really kinda wonder if your car is going to be too low. Factory ride height was pretty level front to rear. And with an A-body 2" of lowering is really the sweet spot for the suspension geometry, it puts the LCA parallel to the ground which is about as good as things get for your camber curves. Lower than that and a couple things happen, one is that you don't have enough suspension travel. The other is that your header flanges end up too close to the ground for a lot of normal driving situations, like speed bumps and driveway transitions. On my car, which is lowered about 2", the driver's header flange is less than 4" off the ground. It's not terrible to deal with daily driving it, but I've run that as low as about 3.5" and at that point you drag the flange on damn near everything. Your drop spindles don't help with the suspension travel either, as I've mentioned before taking the travel limit off of the LCA's doesn't buy you much, because you immediately move it to the top of fenderwell. The tubular LCA gets you about 1" more than the factory LCA by itself because of the lower height profile, and that's enough to make the inner fender the limit before the LCA to frame. At full compression my spindle is only 13" from the top of the inner fender, so a 26" tire would rub at full compression. My tires are 25.6", so it's tight.

With the stock height springs de-arched 1.5" you'll be pretty low already, I doubt once the springs settle in you'll need any kind of block. Look at the Hotchkis springs, they lower the car 1" and even guys that have lowered cars don't always use the hangers that provide the 1" drop.

As for the rear bar, it really depends. I know autoxcuda has one, but he disconnects it when he runs fast road courses because it's too much in higher load corners. Last I heard he was using 1.14" bars up front with Hotchkis springs in the back and Hotchkis sway bars. I know on my Duster with the 1.12" torsion bars and 121 lb/in AFCO's I benefit from the 7/8" Hellwig bar I run on the street, but the 121 lb/in rate is lower than the Hotchkis springs which are 130 lb/in. I also run a tire width stagger with 275's up front and 295's out back, and the additional grip in the back makes a sway bar more likely. But I haven't run on a road course to see if it's too much at higher speeds/loads, just that it works and seems well balanced on the street.

My Hellwig rear bar is also an E-body bar, it's 7/8" vs 3/4". 72BBswinger ran one with his 3" relocated springs, and although mine are only offset a 1/2" I decided to try it. That bar will take different end links to get them straight, the E-body bar is about a 1/2" different in width overall. I have a set of threaded tubes and heims with spacers for mine. It lines up perfectly with the new spring pockets with a 3" relocation, but it's a little off using the unaltered frame rails.
 
I did a 66 Charger that had the late 90's lay it on the ground stance. Had about 3/4 '' between the upper and lower bushing cups.Very short lower control arm stop bumpers. I believe the were poly from Just Suspension.It worked fine.
 
That is a lot to digest, and I will. Took some measurements, the T bars need a bit more tension in them but right now, my Doug's header flange is 5.5" from the ground. Front tire size is 235x45x17 with an effective height of 24 5/8". I did not measure top of tire to top of inner fender yet. I'm mostly concerned about lip rubbing when cornering under loads.
 
I8NEMO said:
That is a lot to digest, and I will. Took some measurements, the T bars need a bit more tension in them but right now, my Doug's header flange is 5.5" from the ground. Front tire size is 235x45x17 with an effective height of 24 5/8". I did not measure top of tire to top of inner fender yet. I'm mostly concerned about lip rubbing when cornering under loads.
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Yeah most people worry about the fender lip, but as you lower the car other things definitely come up. When I was running drop spindles on my Challenger I had to remove a fender brace and then discovered the issue of the distance to the top of the inner fender. The idea of the drop spindles is you can lower the car without losing suspension travel, but it doesn't work as designed because you still run out of clearance. So you don't get to "keep" the suspension travel anyway. 72BBswinger ran into the same issue on his Dart, he wasn't using drop spindles. You can see his solution here
IMG_0639_zpsvqasevco copy.jpg


The thing is that if you run larger torsion bars you don't need to keep all of that travel anyway, the larger bars will result in less suspension travel. Although honestly on my car because of the QA1 LCA's and the altered bump stop heights the suspension travel is fairly close to stock anyway. The earlier QA1 LCA's without the integrated bump stops add almost an inch of travel, and by shortening the lower bump stop on the frame I gained almost another inch. So the ~2" drop didn't change the overall travel on compression, and the taller upper bumpstop keeps the down travel similar as well. I don't need the mods that 72BBswinger did yet, but if I lowered more I would. But for a daily I'm already as low as I want to be, lower would just cause more problems.

5.5" to the header flange? That's not that far from stock ride height. Heck with as short as you tires are it might be stock. But with the drop spindles installed that means your control arm angles are actually worse than stock, effectively you've raised the suspension 2" which results in terrible geometry. Which is another reason I don't like those things. If you use them, but don't drop the car the full 2", you end up with even worse suspension geometry than factory. The camber curves and roll centers will actually be worse because of the control arm angles.

At that height you could easily be using stock spindles. If you look at your control arms you'll probably see that the ball joints are well below the attachment points with a steep angle on the control arms.
 
72bluNblu said:
Yeah most people worry about the fender lip, but as you lower the car other things definitely come up. When I was running drop spindles on my Challenger I had to remove a fender brace and then discovered the issue of the distance to the top of the inner fender. The idea of the drop spindles is you can lower the car without losing suspension travel, but it doesn't work as designed because you still run out of clearance. So you don't get to "keep" the suspension travel anyway. 72BBswinger ran into the same issue on his Dart, he wasn't using drop spindles. You can see his solution here
View attachment 1715682972

The thing is that if you run larger torsion bars you don't need to keep all of that travel anyway, the larger bars will result in less suspension travel. Although honestly on my car because of the QA1 LCA's and the altered bump stop heights the suspension travel is fairly close to stock anyway. The earlier QA1 LCA's without the integrated bump stops add almost an inch of travel, and by shortening the lower bump stop on the frame I gained almost another inch. So the ~2" drop didn't change the overall travel on compression, and the taller upper bumpstop keeps the down travel similar as well. I don't need the mods that 72BBswinger did yet, but if I lowered more I would. But for a daily I'm already as low as I want to be, lower would just cause more problems.

5.5" to the header flange? That's not that far from stock ride height. Heck with as short as you tires are it might be stock. But with the drop spindles installed that means your control arm angles are actually worse than stock, effectively you've raised the suspension 2" which results in terrible geometry. Which is another reason I don't like those things. If you use them, but don't drop the car the full 2", you end up with even worse suspension geometry than factory. The camber curves and roll centers will actually be worse because of the control arm angles.

At that height you could easily be using stock spindles. If you look at your control arms you'll probably see that the ball joints are well below the attachment points with a steep angle on the control arms.
Click to expand...
I'm gaining more and more interest in larger T bars, what would be a modest upgrade ? 1.03" I'm not sure what my factory bars are
 
I8NEMO said:
I'm gaining more and more interest in larger T bars, what would be a modest upgrade ? 1.03" I'm not sure what my factory bars are
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All the factory bars are too small, even the ones that came on the 383 cars. You have to keep in mind that the stock torsion bars were sized considering that the car would be running bias ply tires. Even switching to BFG T/A radials on a 15" rim is a massive upgrade in grip compared to what was stock. Then, you can further consider the "style" at the time was for a soft, floaty suspension. Not performance handling but comfort. Throw in shock technology at the time and you end up with a very undersprung suspension. That's not just my opinion, those are the simple facts of how these cars were set up. The wheel rates for the factory suspension compared to the corner weights of these cars are just silly.

Now, in my opinion, even running 15" wheels and BFG T/A's everybody should be running 1" torsion bars or a little bigger unless they're running their car as drag race only. I ran my Duster around for a several months with 1" torsion bars, stock replacement shocks, and 225/60/15's all the way around. And the suspension was still pretty soft for the amount of grip I had. The car needed sway bars at the very least, even just for the 225/60/15's.

Running 17's, sway bars, lowered, tubular control arms, nice shocks, etc I wouldn't even start at 1.03". Especially since you're wanting a "firm correct handling car". I'd be looking at 1.06's (Firm Feel), 1.08's (Bergman or Sway Away), or even 1.12's like I run (firm feel). I don't think you'd have an issue with the 1.06's at all. And, with bars of that size you could lose the drop spindles and run standard 73+ spindles and lower with the torsion bar adjusters. Which would improve your suspension geometry. You could easily be lower than you are currently with 73+ spindles and 1.06's. To get as low as I am the 1.12's are necessary because of the reduced travel, but my car is quite a bit lower. My flange measurement is also to a set of Doug's headers...
IMG_4362.jpeg


The angle isn't quite right, but the bottom of the flange is a little above 3 3/4". Even a little bit higher than this would work fine with the 1.06" bars and standard spindles, and would be way lower than you are now at 5.5" to the flange.
 
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