Excelerate

I busted one of my front sway bar drop links, and keep seeing reinforcing brackets for sale on Lindsey Racing, Paragon, etc. Working in a machine shop it would be a piece of cake to burn some out on our CNC plasma table, if it's worth the effort. Do they make any real difference in handling or are they more for reliability?

Also, if someone has some they would be willing to measure I could make a few sets for cheaper than retail and out of stronger material than 6061 aluminum if there's any interest.

ditch68

My only experience with them is my old 951 had a busted one, and my new one has a receipt for the PO having one replaced/repaired!

I'd be happy to crawl under there and do some measurements for you tomorrow.

BTW, I used to program CNC plasmas, lasers, waterjets, etc. It was a fun job (mostly!)

Jeff

Travis - sflraver

The drop brackets fatigue fracture from bending back and forth.. which is what the sway bar braces stop from happening.

In short, yes. Big difference in both handling and reliability.

BTW, we have them too, on sale for $25

Excelerate

Thanks! I just need the overall length and the distance between each bend, and perhaps a hole location for the part that mounts to the crossmember.

Thom

I tried a set, with a M030 front sway bar, and the car understeered worse than a barge.

Standard drop links were designed to flex on purpose. If there is one thing to do it's perhaps to fit new drop links as 20 year-old ones will have thousands of working cycles and won't be as stiff as new ones.

Some people seem to like these additional brackets when running smaller sway bars though.

MAGK944

I have them on my 30mm 968 M030's and they do a good job at locating the bar. They will stiffen and make the sway work as it should. You don't want the bar moving there, if it does you are not getting the full benefit of your sways. If you are getting understeer I would say the sway is too much bar for your springs.

As for manufacturing stronger ones there is really no point. I've had a lot of track time on these from Rennbay without issue, and they are not exactly expensive to buy.

Excelerate

MAGK I get that the rennbay ones are cheap but as the lowly intern my boss wants me to get more experience with programming the plasma cutter and said I can make anything I wanted to - so why not something useful for my car that also allows me to learn? I agree for almost anyone else it would be far better to buy a set off of rennbay but I can get paid to make a set. It sure beats emptying out chip bins...

MAGK944

I see, I'll measure mine when I get home tonight and post back dimensions for you. Oh and here's the picture, I don't think it loaded correctly on my last post.

MAGK944

Inside bend dimensions:

Center portion 3-1/4"
Top portion 1-3/4"
Bottom portion 1-1/8"
1/4" bolt hole at bottom also 1/4" from end (attaches to top sway bolt only)
Top uses a 1/4" slot open at the end
2x 45deg angles

Hope that helps, GL

MAGK944

...and here is a better picture. I just noticed the new ones actually have two holes for the sway mount, mine is an old version with one but it has stood the test of time.

Thom

Well, I was running 300 lbs springs at the time, but maybe it still wasn't enough?

Excelerate

Update: I burned out a set of bars with MAGK944's dimensions - Big thanks for those, but I have to modify a few of them. The slot is at least .5" wide and the center section should be about a half inch shorter, but the rest is dead on. I'll have another set done tomorrow and try those out. If there's any interest I can post the .DXF file so anyone can make their own.

kens_74911s