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Heavy duty sway bar install - pics FAQ
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chabanais
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PostPosted: Sun May 29, 2011 5:51 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

SGKent wrote:
you will get less warning before you go over - especially if you add a rear bar too.


When I first got my Bus, in 1995, I drove it across the country. I was in Tennessee getting back onto the highway and took a long, ascending, sweeping turn. As I was about halfway around the on ramp (and my speed was increasing) I swear I felt my Bus go on two wheels. I let off the gas and things returned to normal but I had no warning this was about to happen. I would imagine with sways installed I would have not been able to correct and would have rolled the Bus due to my suspension not having absorbed any of that engery.
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old DKP driver
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PostPosted: Sun May 29, 2011 7:52 pm    Post subject: sway bars Reply with quote

I put the rear sway bar on my 1972 tin top westy in 1984 primarily
because i bought a 15 ft boat and towed it all over the west coast.
and can say it helped.

I also put a 7/8 front bar on a few years later and really never noticed a difference....This was after selling the boat

A bus is not a Porsche and should not be treated as such period.
i can drive over highway 17 and know the limits on the curves no matter what car i'm driving.
( highway 17 from santa cruz to los gatos is a very windy road )

What i'm saying is, if you add sway bars to a top heavy bus don't drive like you are on a race track. Idea
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PostPosted: Tue May 31, 2011 3:12 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Interesting points Gents!

I don't agree with all of them, but I appreciate the discussion.

Cheers, Mike
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PostPosted: Tue May 31, 2011 5:26 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Hey hey,

To be clear, I agree that the rear bar is overkill, for my purposes and from what I've read. However, I don't view improving the original stabilizer any differently than I do putting the best possible tires and shocks made for the Bus, on the Bus. I think the assumption that the improvement will cause everyone who does so to drive like they are driving a Maserati to be an incorrect judgement.

Quote:
And you're dampening the natural design of the suspension to dissipate energy


I don't quite understand this chabanais - it seems you are arguing that the suspension without a stabilizer bar will act better by dissipating energy, or that adding one does what you state - I don't agree. A stabilizer bar acts to keep the vehicle's body flat by moving force from one side of the body to another. If you allow the outside-of-the-turn tires to "dissipate energy" unchecked (w/out stab. bar), then the inner two can lose traction more easily than with. Yes, this can be overdone, but I'd argue that the stabilizer was put on my Bus originally (and recently!) as an improvement.

Quote:
When I first got my Bus, in 1995, I drove it across the country. I was in Tennessee getting back onto the highway and took a long, ascending, sweeping turn. As I was about halfway around the on ramp (and my speed was increasing) I swear I felt my Bus go on two wheels. I let off the gas and things returned to normal but I had no warning this was about to happen. I would imagine with sways installed I would have not been able to correct and would have rolled the Bus due to my suspension not having absorbed any of that engery.


This seems not quite correct to me tho, or I'm confused... With a stabilizer bar, a vehicle's body tends to stay flat in the turn as the bar moves the force from one side to the other (within it's ability)... that is, it seems to me that if you had an anti-swaybar, you might not have experienced the roll you did. Did you have one?

Cheers, Mike
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chabanais
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PostPosted: Tue May 31, 2011 6:48 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

A sway bar helps to minimize sway by reducing the independent movement of the left and right shock absorber because it ties the two wheels together, right? This is why the ride over bumps becomes rougher. If the left wheel hits a pot hole it is more connected to the right wheel via the sway bar which reduces upward suspension travel on the wheel that's trying to move vertically. This had the effect of reducing "sway" because it takes more energy to make the wheels move up and down on their own.

That energy doesn't simply disappear however, you feel it in your ass when you hit a bump and the "shock wave" travels away from its source which would be upwards to the top of the car.

Remember, energy can never be created or destroyed simply transferred. Without a sway bar the independent upward movement of the suspension transfers the energy. When you tie the two wheels together with the sway bar the suspension itself dissipates less energy so more is transfered into the car and upwards making it more likely to tip. That's why I used that photo as an illustration.

Without that sway bar, the chances that rear wheel would raise off the ground is vastly lower (the suspension would have absorbed the inertial energy).

Image may have been reduced in size. Click image to view fullscreen.


My point was that your Bus will feel like it handles better up until the point where it rolls over because less energy is being absorbed. I'm sure you can drive with sway bars for 50 years and never have a single issue with your Bus tipping over... I was just saying it could give some people false confidence and it will lower the threshold required to roll the car.
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PostPosted: Thu Feb 21, 2013 1:14 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

HouseofGhia wrote:
Scott......any chance of a front sway bar for a narrowed beam coming out in the future?

Mike


Any info on this?
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PostPosted: Thu Feb 21, 2013 11:43 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

It doesn't make sense to me that folks are saying the anti sway bars make the bus more dangerouse because with them installed there is no warning before you roll the bus. Wouldn't that mean all cars are more prone to roll when they have sway bars? Then why do race cars have them, you would think they wouldn't if this was the case because the drivers are good enough to compensate when the car starts to tip by gassing out of it.
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Hal9000
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PostPosted: Sat Feb 23, 2013 11:39 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I think that this is one of those cases where a piece of good information has been extended to an illogical conclusion. I didn't read many facts that I disagreed with, but I can't agree with the conclusion that ASB's reduce a vehicle's cornering ability, which seems to be what some of the old posters were saying.

Having an ASB will flatten the handling and give the driver more confidence. That's because the perception of body roll is inherently unnerving and will make all or nearly all drivers back off before they reach the handling limits of a vehicle.

What CAN happen is that drivers who rely on body roll to tell them how close to the edge of the vehicles capabilities they are will miss other signs and end up on their side. What can also happen is that people who put wide tires on their bus can create a situation where the bus is less likely to slide. If the tires stick instead of sliding out then the bus will end up on its side. Couple that with more confidence and you can get a vehicle which is inherently unforgiving to screw ups.

BUT, a vehicle wont roll until the CG gets beyond the edge of the tires. Since at any given speed or level of lateral acceleration (g force), ASB's keep the vehicle flatter and keep the CG closer to the center of the vehicle, they decrease the likelihood of a rollover (you could also say they increase the amount of lateral force needed to induce a rollover). So if you take the driver out of the picture, the vehicle is actually more stable.

No car is going to suddenly jump in the air and somersault sideways once some magic threshold is reached. But the faster a vehicle is going when its handling capabilities are exceeded, the quicker the whole rolling process is likely to occur (there are exceptions to this), and if the tires don't let the vehicle slide, then all the energy involved will go into the tipping process. So if ASB's increase the speed that a bus can handle a specific cornering situation, then when you cross the line, you may have far less time to correct and recover. This is a symptom of better handling characteristics and not an indication of worse handling characteristics.
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PostPosted: Sun Feb 24, 2013 12:50 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

The way I look at it is that a bus is just about the poorest handling vehicle out there, especially in the wind. If adding a rear anti sway bar or a larger front one makes the vehicle hold its lane better then it just about has to be a plus. People aren't going to all of the sudden start driving these underpowered vehicles like a Porsche, so unless the potential negative handling characteristics are extremely severe and dangerous, the plus side just about has to overcome the negative.

I would expect that adding additional antisway devices would negatively affect off road traction. The loosie goosie factory suspension allows the wheels to stay on the ground over very uneven surfaces. Off road a Bay will far surpass a Vanagon with its added resistance to body roll.
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PostPosted: Sun Feb 24, 2013 4:15 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Red Fau Veh wrote:
Then why do race cars have them, you would think they wouldn't if this was the case because the drivers are good enough to compensate when the car starts to tip by gassing out of it.


My experience setting up my 914 is that you use sway bars as one part of the suspension tuning package of springs, sways bars and shocks. You tune the suspension to act in a certain way and race courses are fairly predicable. I tuned my 914 to drive fairly stiff and flat when cornering up to the point where it would 360 spin.
No way would I do that to my bus! I did add the front sway to stiffen the front against wind buffeting and it did that. I also helped in high speed lane changing etc...I never have gone further in tuning the suspension as its ok and comfortable as it is with new oil shocks up front and KYB GR2's in back.
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PostPosted: Sun Feb 24, 2013 8:32 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Hal9000 wrote:
I think that this is one of those cases where a piece of good information has been extended to an illogical conclusion. I didn't read many facts that I disagreed with, but I can't agree with the conclusion that ASB's reduce a vehicle's cornering ability, which seems to be what some of the old posters were saying.


The factory engineers knew exactly what they were doing. They wanted the adhesion limits of the tires to be exceeded before the CG left the wheel base. The front stabilizer bar was designed to make the front of the vehicle lose traction before the rear (understeer) in an *emergency evasive maneuver*. Stabilizer bars promote breakaway, they do not promote increased traction.

Hal9000 wrote:

Having an ASB will flatten the handling and give the driver more confidence.


This is the subjective sensation that sellers of aftermarket bars will focus upon. The sensation of increased responsiveness in normal driving is nice and all, but that is not where these things are doing their work.

Hal9000 wrote:

That's because the perception of body roll is inherently unnerving and will make all or nearly all drivers back off before they reach the handling limits of a vehicle.


In an emergency evasive maneuver, your VW bus has been designed to lose traction before it flips. Factory engineers had this down to a science in the size of the tire footprint, the lateral transfer of weight (Center of Gravity) the suspension loading (in the rear of the VW, the engine and transaxle forces are brought down as the outside rear compresses under load), and the lifting of the front inside wheel by the stabilizer bar to promote front end breakaway.

Hal9000 wrote:
What can also happen is that people who put wide tires on their bus can create a situation where the bus is less likely to slide. If the tires stick instead of sliding out then the bus will end up on its side. Couple that with more confidence and you can get a vehicle which is inherently unforgiving to screw ups.


Yes!

Hal9000 wrote:

BUT, a vehicle wont roll until the CG gets beyond the edge of the tires. Since at any given speed or level of lateral acceleration (g force), ASB's keep the vehicle flatter and keep the CG closer to the center of the vehicle,


No! Use your imagination here. A stiff rear suspension with a rear-engined car will send the inertial forces sideways above the tire footprint. A soggy soft rear suspension will bring those inertial forces down.

Hal9000 wrote:

So if ASB's increase the speed that a bus can handle a specific cornering situation, then when you cross the line, you may have far less time to correct and recover. This is a symptom of better handling characteristics and not an indication of worse handling characteristics.


There is so much science and art involved here, that we are all in danger of talking far past the truth of the matter.

IF you drop the ride height which drops the center of gravity of a VW bus, then yes, you can increase roll stiffness front and rear, and you can increase tire footprint and have a better handling bus. But who here is testing this stuff on a skid pad?

Who here knows that they have maintained initial understeer transitioning to terminal oversteer with full breakaway before the CoG leaves the wheel base?

Who here is enjoying the subjective improvements of big bars and that most-excellent off-ramp/on-ramp behavior without a CLUE as to what the car is going to do the first time you have to violent swerve left to avoid that stupid dog then swerve right to avoid the oncoming car?

All I am saying is that the hardware under you is designed for moments when the tires are actually losing traction, not any time under those limits.
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Hal9000
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PostPosted: Sun Feb 24, 2013 10:46 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Colin, I think one of us is focusing on the what and the other on the why.

Yes, swaybars promote breakaway instead of sticking and tipping (a good thing by the way). This is because they increase the stability of the car in relation to the coefficient of traction of the tire. The tires don't have any less traction (I've said it elsewhere, because of the increased stability, you can actually have more traction), but the vehicle is now capable of maintaining more lateral acceleration and overcoming the traction which it previously couldn't.

When you have a vehicle that is turning, tipping, and sliding all at once there are so many force vectors involved that minor changes in condition (weather, tire brand or size, road conditions and temperature, level of wear or brands of OE replacement parts used etc) will have unpredictable and amplied effects on the handling of the car. Nobody (even the factory engineers) can accurately predict all those forces or the way they interplay. The best they can do is create a system that behaves a certain way in a narrowly defined set of circumstances. I've seen enough stock busses rolled on their sides to be skeptical that they really have idealized suspension. What they DO have is suspension design that met all the comprimises they set between performance, comfort, and price for a very low priced vehicle. I would also add that since the suspension on our 60's and 70's vintage buses was designed, tire technology has changed dramatically and even "stock" replacement tires now have much more traction than the original tires. There should be no expectation that the factory suspension will work in the way the engineers intended with modern grippy tires.

You're right that sensation isn't where the "work" is being done. It's just the obvious manifestation of that work. I'm proposing that driver error is where the issue is, not performance.


Quote:

In an emergency evasive maneuver, your VW bus has been designed to lose traction before it flips. Factory engineers had this down to a science
I would argue that this isn't the case just based on the number of roll over accidents VW's had compared to other vehicles of the day. I'll stand by my earlier comments that they had a limited budget to design a working suspension and they did the best they could, which wasn't bad all considering, but was far from ideal.


Quote:

A stiff rear suspension with a rear-engined car will send the inertial forces sideways above the tire footprint. A soggy soft rear suspension will bring those inertial forces down.


I'm going to take a guess that you mean the sideways forces have greater mechanical advantage because they're acting higher on the vehicle and can thus create a greater effect on the vehicle. That's not taking into account the change in force necessary to create the same change if you have forces (IE and ASB) resisting that action. Also, a vehicle that sways may squat on one side, but it is also rising on the other side and as all that mass rises, its mechanical advantage will be increased. Since the forces and weight are all now focused more on a single center of rotation (the line formed by the two outside tires) instead of a plane (as with 3 or 4 tires firmly planted), it takes comparatively less force to rotate the vehicle on that axis and cause a rollover.

No matter if you're talking about inertial forces or lateral acceleration, a vehicle will try to return to the most stable position. If the CG is between the tires, then that position is upright. If the vehicle tips far enough that the CG passes outside the wheelbase, the most stable position becomes "other than upright". This is also why widening a vehicles track increases its stability. You essentially have to rotate the vehicle farther to get the CG outside the wheelbase.

Quote:

who here is testing this stuff on a skid pad?

Who here knows that they have maintained initial understeer transitioning to terminal oversteer with full breakaway before the CoG leaves the wheel base?


I almost brought this up earlier but didn't want to end up "writing a book" about the subject all in one post (whoops, so much for that idea). Anyway, you are absolutely correct on this. Race teams, auto manufacturers, etc have the advantage of lots of testing and trials to figure out what the effects of their changes are. That's an advantage that we don't have. My personal choice to alleviate that problem is to opt for maximum stability and limit the traction. So I lean towards doing the suspension mods but avoiding the wide sticky tires. Especially on something like a VW, even the skinniest modern tires you can buy are more than enough, and you get the added advantage of reducing your unsprung and rotating weight and improving acceleration and suspension response that way too. If you make a conscious decision to have traction be your limiting factor then you alleviate much of the risk associated with improving the vehicles handling, AND you can go out and test the limits of the car safely.
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PostPosted: Sun Oct 13, 2013 8:11 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Excellent write up on the sway bar and the install procedures worked perfectly. One thing I noticed is the mating surfaces are slight off on my sway bar and I hope after use and repeated checking and tightening the surfaces will finally mate.
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PostPosted: Sun Oct 13, 2013 11:08 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Adding really stiff sway bars will make your bus not only handle better but go down the freeway with less drag. Tying a chicken to the front of your bus with the beak pointed into the wind will also add at least 7 MPH to your speed as the beak breaks the wind. The feathers of the wing when it flaps on corners will help hold the nose of the bus down in the turns and also reduce wind buffeting.

We sell a chicken mounting kit with our swaybars for those of you interested in this new technology. The chicken will enjoy the ride better. Our models have a quick release latch in case of an imminent head on. This serves also to warn you in case of an impending head on, and will serve to give you additional warning time if you see the chicken take off and fly past your windshield. The only caveat is you have to be careful when passing by corn fields as some chickens will try to drag the bus off road and into the field if they have not been well fed that morning.

Here you have a photo of one of our converted buses with the chickens grazing comfortable between rides. You'll note the bus also has our lightweight siding on it to reduce the CG of the bus to help it corner better. This is an additional kit that can be purchased. In a few hours you can convert your bus into a lightweight streamlined freeway cruiser.

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PostPosted: Sun Oct 13, 2013 12:21 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I have a bus which was lowered with cut and twist (one of the other 19 previous owners) , which rides on 185/65 R15 tyres. It did not have front bump stops but relied at first on hitting the limit of travel on the front shocks. Then I fitted shorter shocks and it started rubbing.

I have made the change from sway bar to coilover shocks because I snapped the sway bar after hitting the road surface too often.

The final straw was driving in a shopping centre carpark area in the Republic of Ireland. There were a pair of holes in the nearly new road about 6 inches deep which I couldnt miss. There was a big bang but I was able to carry on driving with a bend in the bar.
It kept on catching on the central steering pivot bearing.

A few weeks later it snapped inside one of the rubber bushes on a corner. Another bang and I thought 'there goes the sway bar' . I was right. I drove it for hundreds of miles without the sway bar , although the rubbing on corners limited the speed.

So I had a couple of adjustable coilovers fitted, and the front went up about an inch from too low.

I could have had a sway bar fitted but that would not cure the rubbing that has been a problem since I bought the bus.

With the coilovers the suspension is stiff. But it no longer has the horrible flick and 'nodding; caused by hitting a bump on one wheel making the bus roll around or the nose dive or rise, which would be accompanied by the scraping of the roll bar.

And on rough roads, the truly independent suspension means I can now go over rougher roads without the bus 'nodding' on each bump. It pushes wheels one at a time down holes in the road.

My family prefer the harder ride.

And I can go back to cornering at the same speed on motorway on-ramps as most of the rest of the traffic, as it was before when the antisway bar was fitted and working.

And the scrapes and bangs on normal roads seem to have vanished.
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PostPosted: Sat Oct 18, 2014 10:30 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

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funny stuff SGKent

Hell of a discussion there upstairs...

Hey - I was just following Ratwell's suggestion and finally got one of these things (front). They bought me a rear one too (great - more work....).

I figure the front one makes sense anyway.... So here's a dumb question: So you lube the shit out of the bar and jam the bushings on? Does'nt seem like it will work....
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PostPosted: Sun Oct 19, 2014 5:08 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

What does not seem like it will work? Did you get the bar with the urethane bushings and silicone grease? That's what I have had for 5 years now. Getting the first bushing over the bar was a PITA but once I figured that out the 2nd one went much quicker. And as SGKent said, I am faster, have less drag, chicks dig me, my tax returns are larger, I get invited to international galas, I............
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PostPosted: Sun Oct 19, 2014 5:57 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

SGKent wrote:
Tying a chicken to the front of your bus with the beak pointed into the wind will also add at least 7 MPH to your speed as the beak breaks the wind. Rolling Eyes Rolling Eyes Rolling Eyes . Your chicken breaks wind - Question Question all over the windshield. Shocked Shocked


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PostPosted: Sun Oct 19, 2014 10:51 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Edited: HA! I did not notice that the bushings were slit. They will fit after all. They seemed like one piece to me out of the box.

Babysnakes:
Quote:
What does not seem like it will work? Did you get the bar with the urethane bushings and silicone grease? That's what I have had for 5 years now. Getting the first bushing over the bar was a PITA but once I figured that out the 2nd one went much quicker.


Babysnakes can you tell me the secret so it's not a PITA? I assume you put the bar in a vice, lube it all, put the bushing in hot water for a while, then smash the thing on?

Sorry to bust into the dormant technical discussions. Perhaps I missed 1975 Kombi's reference to procedures... (nice photo of remaining gap btw - one more issue when moving away from stock...).

As mentioned above - I was planning on only doing the front but presently also have the back sway bar. I like how Chabanais described his off ramp almost-going-over moment. I am a bit concerned by all the things I read here.

My basic instinct is the front sway bar is worthy and fun (and easy to install?), and mostly an improvement over worn out stock parts for driving straight, while being buffeted by strong wind. The rear sway bar is additionally more expensive and designed for people lowering & tricking out rigs to race on the track (i.e., not me).

Buses are to be babied, and a person must choose those things most likely to keep them and theirs and strangers alive and uninjured. Speeding around winding mountain corners may be fun for light sports cars, but is likely stupid for an antique bus.


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PostPosted: Sun Oct 26, 2014 11:20 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Ummm, so Lads, the question still remains:

Replace Front only IF fun/ reasonable?

What do I do with this extra rear sway bar in a box in the living room?

[1975 Transporter - (Highway Sail) - with goal of reaching greater stability using easily replaced components: tire/ shock/ sway]
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