My truck has sway bar end links like the ones in this picture that I stole off the internet because it's cold and dark outside and don't want to take a picture of my truck.
While trying to chase down the last clunk in the front end I added some washers to the stack so I could tighten things more without running out of thread. Noting was loose before, at least not loose enough to move by hand, but it's certainly much tighter now. The little pucks are slightly squished to bulging. And it feels FANTASTIC compared to how it was before.
So my question: is mashing these tight good or bad? If good, how tight is tight. If bad, what is bad?
Preloading is sort of a poor man's adjustable spring perch since you can help alter the static weight.
FWD drag racers have used it quite a bit to help equalize weight on the front end without altering the suspension drastically.
That said, running those the way you may cause more wear on the bushings, but if it feels better, then I'd say that was an improvement.
I've heard of doing that by shimming the bar at a mount, but not through the end links themselves. Interesting. I'm not massively concerned about the current end link bushings longevity as they're something like 120k miles old and I feel I've got my money's worth out of them.
I don't see a problem here, worst case it will beat up the rubber more or break the link because it can't articulate enough, links are cheap and easy enough to not be too concerned. I think any I've put in bulged out a little when I ran out of thread, so maybe you just got a defective kit.
We always say not to Squeeze them outside the diameter of the washer, Keep things equal because the sway bar is a Spring and you can pre-load the chassis, use a spring rubber to prop up the truck,sway bar controls Roll.
I keep driving it and most of the weird, 'worn out truck' handling is gone. I'm liking it.
This is kind of a huge 1.5 inch/38mm solid bar. I'm guessing that I really did have slack in the system under cornering. The bar is so stiff that it was smushing the end link bushings before it was actually twisting.
