Re: Rear Sway Bar

[tobyp@xxxx]

Scott - I'm sorry to be so late in my post on this topic. I was on 
a road trip to buy additional inventories of original DMC parts for 
DeLorean Parts Northwest. I installed an Addco rear sway bar on 
Winged1 many years ago. The company had just produced a handful of 
kits, and two of us in the PNDC bought them for our cars. Addco 
went on to produce the parts and carry the number in their catalog. 
In answer to your questions, the installation was complicated by the 
fact that the bar didn't fit very well with the included hardware. 
The bar was designed to attach to the trailing arms with long bolts 
and rubber bushings into steel angles bolted through the trailing 
arms. The saddle brackets were designed to be bolted to the web of 
the frame cross-member that supports the engine. This saddle 
bracket attachment eventually cracked the frame web on both sides. 
In addition, the angles of the bar ends relative to the attachment 
angles on the trailing arms were wrong, so the end bushings 
disintegrated rapidly. I had the frame cracks welded up, and then 
installed new doublers made from .200" thick aluminum-magnesium 
alloy to strengthen and stiffen the frame web. I changed the 
attachment location on the trailing arm to further aft from the 
original spot, and used spherical rod ends instead of the bolts / 
bushings. The final result of all of this is a dramatic improvement 
in the cornering ability of the car, with almost no body roll, and 
fantastic turn-in. The price that was paid is that I now have 3.5 " 
of ground clearance in the rear, to the saddle brackets. From my 
experience on this installation, there are several things that I 
would do differently in terms of bar location and attachment 
strategy. Several people have emailed me to suggest that I develop 
something for this area, and I'm looking into what might be possible 
with current "off the shelf" parts in order to keep costs down.

Toby Peterson VIN 2248 (Winged1)
DeLorean Parts Northwest, LLC
www.delorean-parts.com


--- In dmcnews@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, "Scott Mueller" 
<scott.a.mueller@xxxx> wrote:
> Some time back, there was a lot of talk about installing a rear 
sway bar on the DeLorean. Did anyone on the list install one?
> What was the result?
> How did the installation go?
> Did you encounter any problems?