Hello all,
I've got a '99 Civic that I'm trying to upgrade the rear sway bar. A common problem with adding large rear sway bars is the subframes tear out, so there are some aftermarket braces out there to prevent this.
I bought an subframe brace and a 20mm rear bar, made by different companies. The brace has the sway bar mounting holes in a different location than stock, and the 20mm rear bar came with hardware to fit stock location. So as they didn't play nice together, I bought some universal sway bar brackets/bushings and bolted it all up.
Upon doing this, I discovered there is a small bend in the sway bar right were the bushings end up using the different bushing location dictated by the subframe brace.
What this means is that when the bar is centered, the spots where the bar is bolted to the car are not parallel.
Here's a couple pictures showing evidence of the bend...see the gap between the bushing and bar circled in yellow?
Of course as soon as I took the car for a drive like this, I found the bar and slid over to an area where the bar wasn't bent.
Note the gap is now gone:
Passenger rear end link:
Drivers rear end link:
Now obviously leaving the bar like this is going to result in difference in handling when turning left vs right. I don't see any way to fix the issue short of using a different rear bar that doesn't have that small bend. What I'm contemplating doing is putting a shaft collar on the bar to keep the bar centered on the car. Maybe a cheap version using a strip of rubber innertube or something and a hose clamp. This would keep the bar centered, but should I be concerned with any sort of binding? I could see the bushings getting worn out quickly if I were to do this.
What says GRM? Bite the bullet and buy a different rear bar or is forcing the bar to be centered an acceptable/safe idea?
