Helping someone with a lowered Ford Ranger that has the I beam front suspension. It has a set of dropped beams and a set of drop front coil springs as well. It looks like it gave the truck about 5" of static drop. The front sway bar was removed and now he wants to put it back on. With it reinstalled and the truck sitting on the ground at ride height, there is about 1" of clearance between the sway bar and the steering linkage where it crosses to go back to the sway bar links. So I am having a problem "seeing" what is going to happen when everything starts to move when driving. Since the sway bar is attached to the beam and the tie rod is attached to the spindle on each side, do they move at the same rate and maintain that 1" of clearance? I dont want to have the two bind up in a corner and have him loose steering control. I may be able to lengthen the sway bar links and gain some clearance. Not sure how much before it interferes with something else or the sway bar is twisted up and out of level.
With the sway bar attached, jack the front of the truck up to the point of lifting the tires off the ground, rotate the steering and watch the clearance. As long at nothing touches, it should be good. The minimum clearance is the contact point. You should be able to modify the sway bar mounting to gain clearance, and this method of checking should show you how the modification should be done. Of course, the clearance check needs to be completely redone with modification. If you are really concerned, you can jack the truck up at each side under the outer edge of the I beam and at the center of the frame, rotate the steering and watching the clearance on both sides at each jacking point.
My thoughts are that the inner ends of the tie rods are stationary in relation the frame as are the mountings for the sway bar, so that relationship will not change. The height of the spindle can not change in relation to the I beam so the relationship of the outer ends of the tie rod and sway bar will not change. So, theoretically, they should never hit.
Try flipping the sway bar upside down so the bends go the other way [red lines below] To reverse this [below]
I had already flipped the sway bar to gain a little extra clearance. I got to looking at the sway bar bushings that were changed and they are a little wonky. So I thought maybe I will mod the original ones that are really tall. My thought is to cut the actual bushings to the shortest usable place. Then cut and reweld the brackets to work with the shorter bushings. So there are a couple of different ways I can do this. First would be to just cut a section out in the middle and **** weld it back together. The other way would be to cut the “tabs” off each side, cut the height down and the reweld the “tabs” back on in the corner. Any thoughts on which way would be better? After I get this done I can jack up the truck at different spots suggested and see what is happening. Another thought I had was how will the steering arm come into play? It’s at a fixed height position and the linkage moves with it as well. I guess this will present when I am checking it. Thanks for all the suggestions.
Just measure the bar and buy a universal sway bar kit [about $25] These are Mustang [but the bolt holes are slotted]
The Jalopy Journal
