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9 Posts
TLDR: the new bushings on my rear sway bar endlinks are being compressed at an extreme angle that seems incorrect to me...how flush/aligned with the sway bar eye should the faces of the bushings be? How can I correct that alignment? Sway bar bushing/mount positioning? End link length? Thanks in advance for any input.
Gonna work on getting some pics up - here are the bars I’m dealing with, for reference:
New photo by Eric Baumann
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Hey folks, new to the forum and OBS in general, bought a f350 dually flat-bed with rusty floors/rockers that I am in the middle of replacing...of course once i started poking around underneath I spotted a ton of other work it needs, including new bushings pretty much everywhere.
I went after the low hanging fruit first, front and rear sway bars.
I havent tried reinstalling the front yet but I spent about 4 hours yesterday trying to figure out what the hell is going on with the rear end links...they just dont seem to be entering the eye of the sway bar at the right angle, smashing the bushings off-angle and leaving a huge gap to catch road crap and lead to further rust issues (the old end links had almost completely rotted through at the bushing spindle from being similarly misaligned).
So, I swapped the shorter links from the front onto the rear to see if that improved the angles at all, it did, but still not what I would consider “correct.” (Not that I’m an expert though...) — I tried rotating the bracket back further so the sway bar bushing sits more on the top of the axle instead of the side, pulling the bar back a bit, which again improved alignment with the shorter links, but still not great.
To further complicate things, the sway bar bushings mount to the same bracket that is used for the shock (with a u-bolt attachment to the axle. I had to use a jack underneath to compress the shock (which I discovered needs to be replaced, rusted and leaking, no resistance/rebound) in order to rotate the mount back. On the other side the shock isn’t moving at all when i try to compress with a jack — new shocks on order — so I’ve hit the pause button on this operation for now.
If you made it this far, thanks for reading...and one last follow up question:
How do I determine the correct eye-to-eye shock measurement for the rear in its uncompressed/neutral state?
The bracket on the axle is not in a fixed position so I want to make sure the shock isnt installed overly compressed to ensure it performs as designed.
Thanks in advance for the help!
Gonna work on getting some pics up - here are the bars I’m dealing with, for reference:
New photo by Eric Baumann
——
Hey folks, new to the forum and OBS in general, bought a f350 dually flat-bed with rusty floors/rockers that I am in the middle of replacing...of course once i started poking around underneath I spotted a ton of other work it needs, including new bushings pretty much everywhere.
I went after the low hanging fruit first, front and rear sway bars.
I havent tried reinstalling the front yet but I spent about 4 hours yesterday trying to figure out what the hell is going on with the rear end links...they just dont seem to be entering the eye of the sway bar at the right angle, smashing the bushings off-angle and leaving a huge gap to catch road crap and lead to further rust issues (the old end links had almost completely rotted through at the bushing spindle from being similarly misaligned).
So, I swapped the shorter links from the front onto the rear to see if that improved the angles at all, it did, but still not what I would consider “correct.” (Not that I’m an expert though...) — I tried rotating the bracket back further so the sway bar bushing sits more on the top of the axle instead of the side, pulling the bar back a bit, which again improved alignment with the shorter links, but still not great.
To further complicate things, the sway bar bushings mount to the same bracket that is used for the shock (with a u-bolt attachment to the axle. I had to use a jack underneath to compress the shock (which I discovered needs to be replaced, rusted and leaking, no resistance/rebound) in order to rotate the mount back. On the other side the shock isn’t moving at all when i try to compress with a jack — new shocks on order — so I’ve hit the pause button on this operation for now.
If you made it this far, thanks for reading...and one last follow up question:
How do I determine the correct eye-to-eye shock measurement for the rear in its uncompressed/neutral state?
The bracket on the axle is not in a fixed position so I want to make sure the shock isnt installed overly compressed to ensure it performs as designed.
Thanks in advance for the help!
