V2Rocket

i dont recall any difficulty when i put in my CIP 26mm bars but i did grease the hell out of the splines before installation with red "wheel bearing" grease.

thomasmryan

nocomment

Well I finally managed to install the bars. The CIP bars have splines with much closer tolerances than the factory bars, and my old bars were very worn out which i believe cause the spring plate bushings to wear in a way that caused the spring plate splines to not line up with the carrier splines. So by installing the new ones it effectively was also straightening out the spring plates, although the bushings themselves have a lot of life left. In order to get them in, I used the old torsion bar to go through the hole in the fender and against the new bar, which gave me a point to hit with the hammer. I would give a few good wacks while adjusting the trailing arm to get it started, and then it took A LOT of force to get them in(20ish hits with a good size ball-peen). In order to get them out again for adjustment(same technique i used to get the old ones out) I welded a threaded rod to the end of one and used a socket, washer, and nut as a puller to pull it out, and then i put a steel rod through the carrier to knock it out from behind. This worked well and took me 3 tries to get the ride height correct. I did try a slide hammer first, but it wasn't enough force to remove the old bars. Thank you all for your help ruling out possible issues and making the job easier. I now have new 28mm bars with 250lb front springs to match.

harveyf

Congrats!!! It's a good feeling when you overcome 944 adversity.

You had me worried when I read about the force required to insert the bars but if you got them back out again 3 times then all is good. And I think we all learned something from this episode.

FYI I bought a slide hammer just for this application but I've never been able to get it to work either. Not sure why. I wind up putting a rod through the hole in my welded tab and using a lever action to get things moving.