Although the torsion bars are under more stress when the doors are closed compared to the total stress imposed on the bars even if you keep the doors open you are not really reducing the stress all that much. Same goes for the gas pressure in the struts. The difference is that over time the pressure does leak out as opposed to the stress on the torsion bars which over the life of the bar changes very little even with changes in temperature. Until you pass the elastic limit of the materiel in the torsion bars they will return to the shape that they origionaly were. In normal usage of the torsion bars that doesn't happen. What probably did happen to your bar is that it got scratched at some time in it's life. Stess concentrated on the scratch and became a crack which caused the catastophic failure. I have seen this happen. It happened to me on my passenger bar. The bar rubbed on the rear hinge. I now keep a small piece of rubber cut from an inner tube between the torsion bars and the rear hinge. It is especially important to use the rubber at the time the bars are adjusted as they can move around a lot more and have a greater chance of contacting the rear hinge. On some cars the bar is closer to the hinge then on others. You should be able to pull the bar away from the rear hinge and slip in between a small piece of rubber about 1" by 2". Do it on both doors with a small dab of glue to keep it in there. David Teitelbaum vin 10757 --- In dmcnews@xxxx, "Toby Peterson" <tobyp@xxxx> wrote: > Paul - I can't personally help you in terms of a replacement torsion > bar, but I can tell you that the torsion bars are at their highest > loading state with the doors closed. That will be pretty much the > only time you will see a failure of the bar - either while opening or