Making a sway bar - looking for input

I'm thinking 1.25" sway bar for the TR4. Kits for TR4s are about $150 and are 3/4". OTOH, poly mounts are $30, and a 1.25 x 60" steel rod is about $15. I have a 20 ton press. Any suggestions on how to get a couple of 85 bends in the rod??? For sheet metal you can get 90 bends using a couple of pieces of angle iron. Is a 20 ton press enough juice or should I just cut to length and weld on some "legs" to reach the A-arm mounts/links (adds a few pounds but easy)? I'm drawing blanks. Maybe using some schedule 40 pipe in the radius I want the bend??? Thoughts, ideas?

Well you're going to need spring steel, not just any old steel bar. A pipe bender would probably be a better choice for bending.

My first two thoughts are to call Addco about making a custom sway bar, or to look into whether it's possible to modify your car to run standardized circle track sway bars.

GameboyRMH wrote: My first two thoughts are to call Quickor about making a custom sway bar, or to look into whether it's possible to modify your car to run standardized circle track sway bars.

Fixed that.

Addco is annoying as E36 M3 to deal with.

ok, 1.25 looks like maybe overkill - 1" is looking better. A piece of 4130 (pretty much what most commercial sway bars are made from) is around $35. I'm thinking welded arms and call it done. The welds could induce a little compromise on the metal fatigue end of things that I'd be willing to live with.

I'd be walking a pick-n-pull yard looking for a close fit and modifying that. GM has made about a billion shapes and sizes of sway bars over the years. I assume a TR4 bar is relatively narrow between the ends, but there may be something usable out there.

very simple "C" shape - 2 bends. Unfortunately the local PNP went away. Heartbreaking...

The sway bars on both the front and back of the Lethal Locost were made from basic mild steel round bar. Mind you, they are pretty light, but they ~did~ work very well.

I've adapted sway bars from one car to fit another car. That works too.

Ideally, you'd want the correct alloy, and have it re-heat-treated when you're done welding. But, mild steel is cheap, and it works.

Not sure what the rates are but you could always hack a torsion bar. Similar to this http://www.carlisuspension.com/dodge-ram/images/D_TSB.png

Back in the day I built a rear sway bar for my cadavalier. I can't seem to find any of the pictures I had, but I used 7/8" 1018 cold rolled steel for the torsion bar and 1" x 0.5" bar stock for the arms. I bent the arms in a sturdy bench vice by clamping another piece of bar stock to it for leverage. I chamfered the ends of the torsion bar and cranked my hazard fraught 220v mig to 11. I bough some energy suspension bushings and brackets at autozone and drilled and bolted it to the torsion beam suspension. The endlinks were just tabs I welded to the arms and it attached at the rear shock bolt. It worked like a boss for many thousands of miles. There wasn't much rear suspension travel, since the crappy torsion beam rear works more like a solid axle, so I was able to use a relatively cheap steel for the torsion bar. On a vehicle with independent suspension and more travel, you may need to use a steel with a different modulus of elasticity and or yield strength.

Torsion Bar Calcs

No need for chrome moly for a sway bar- mild steel will work just fine. Most any shop with a tube bender with dies for the OD rod you are using can make this. Maybe get a slot machined in the end for the flats that the endlinks attach to and weld this in.

Otherwise, I would try to use speedway parts for the swaybar, if possible.