installed new 1" rear sway bar. What size should I use for the front bar????? Not a road racer but want to corner with falling over.
Search the junkyards for a 1.25" one from either a G-body or 70-81 Camaro/Firebird. Either car will need to have the handling package, but don't rule out the 4-door G-bodies, as my brother junked one that had the big swaybar. If you have a friendly junkyard, $20 should probably buy it.
Never seen a G-body with a 1.25" frt bar. All 70-81 Trans Am models have the 1.25" frt bar. I have an article on our site for this swap.
I got one from a cabureted turbo Regal once. It might have been 1.125, but I am pretty sure it was 1.25" My brother got his from a v-6 nothing special looking 4-door Oldsmobile. He figured out somehow it had a HD suspension package after discovering the big swaybar. It had a rear bar too. o No: I should add that he used the entire front clip for a hotrod, but my point was that it also had a large sway-bar.
I am 99% sure the G-body models from 78-87 have a narrower frame and they will not bolt-on. The only ones I have found that are a direct swap are the 70-81 Trans Am models.
George, I both took it off the Regal and bolted it on my 69 El Camino myself....it had allen-head bolts holding it on. I don't recall if the dimensions were exactly the same, but without a doubt, it fit wihout a problem.
I have friends that race Chevy's & they always told me that for good cornering you want the front say bar to be at least .25" larger diameter than the rear sway bar.
Check it out George. I swear I'm not crazy(but most crazy people do the same thing). Since it was 15-years ago when I got it, I might have found it wouldn't work and got another one, but I am all but certain that isn't the case.
The G-body bar doesn't fit in 64-67 chassis for sure. I just tried it. F-body bars work though. Don't see why the 68-72 chassis would be different. Pat
I got lucky and found a chrome 1.125 one at a swap meet for $30 and it even had new mounts. The main thing is you want the front to be larger than the rear.
The rear bar on our cars just bolts from one lower control arm to the other. It doesn't bolt to the body or frame like the front bar. Because of this, the bar is less effective. You can go pretty big on the rear. I have 1 3/8" onm the front, and 1 1/2" om the rear. Car handles great.
I put a 1.25" front and a 1" rear on my convertible HOLEY COW does it corner flat. OPGI sells them fairly inexpensively too.
Anybody know if the shims are important for the rear swaybar? Just put one on the convertible without any shims.
I'm going to say yes they're important. you don't want anything else to bind in the suspension. mine needed 1/8" on both sides to fit. 1/4" narrower than where they should be could cause some problems. -nate
I got 6 shims with my 1" rear bar and only used 2 on one side and one on the other. No more would fit, so I figured good enough. I just used enough to fill all the slack between the bar and the boxed sway arms.
