filter27e
04-03-2007, 09:07 PM
I felt that it's rather important that we have a seperate writeup for the front swaybar because the route that the front swaybar takes from one wheel to the other is DRASTICALLY different than the rear. The author of that post said that you should be good at tetris, which I would agree you gotta use your head on this one. Hopefully I'll make it easier for everyone else because the haynes manual says something to the effect of, 'disconnect endlinks, remove sway bar.' So I had a bit to figure out on my own.
What you'll need
All the basics: a jack, jackstands, and various sockets and wrenches.
You'll also need ramps unless you have long arms, a little head, or are otherwise a contortionist.
Procedure:
1. Now where it starts is kinda theoretical. Personally I started off by driving the car up on ramps, disconnecting the endlinks, then realizing I needed at least one wheel off in order to get it anywhere else. The bar will be loaded if the wheels are off the ground, so if you want to try by jacking it up, removing a wheel, and then disconnecting the endlinks and you wind up not being able to pull the endlinks off, that's why.
2. So now that you have the endlinks disconnected from the swaybar, the vehicle lifted, at least one wheel removed, and the vehicle on jackstands with the jack out of the way, you're ready to think about removing the swaybar. You'll need to disconnect the swaybar mounts that secure it to the front crossmember. Words of caution: these bolts suck, use penetrating oil on the threaded side before trying to take them out. Personally I decided I didn't need to do this and broke both of them off in the crossmember. Yeah... but anyways, on cars like mine, produced before 8/97, the mount is held on by one 12mm bolt, screwed into a nut welded to the crossmember. Once that bolt is removed it hinges downward and you can pull out the bushings.
3. Now heres the part that will save you one big WTF. You need to remove the jacking plate at the center of the the crossmember, unless you happen to be installing headers at the same time, then you could take out the exhaust instead. On my car, the front two bolts had a free nut on the other side, the rear two bolts were more of the screw directly into the crossmember dealies (yeah I broke one of those too). I'm not even positive you could get a new nut on the otherside if you were to drill out the old bolt, so try REAL hard to not break both of these.
4. With the jacking plate removed, you should be able to just pull and turn from there on out to remove the bar. With the bar out, then installation is the reverse of removal. Just be sure to grease the new bushings. Even if you had gotten the old bar out without using ramps, you'll want to bust those out to finish connecting the endlinks, way more trouble then it would be worth to try to get those in there with the vehicle lifted.
Alright well I think that covers everything... I didn't take any pictures because I didn't want to mess with washing my hands before every picture, but if someone would like to volunteer a picture of the underside of their front end I'd be happy to draw some arrows on it and post it for reference.
What you'll need
All the basics: a jack, jackstands, and various sockets and wrenches.
You'll also need ramps unless you have long arms, a little head, or are otherwise a contortionist.
Procedure:
1. Now where it starts is kinda theoretical. Personally I started off by driving the car up on ramps, disconnecting the endlinks, then realizing I needed at least one wheel off in order to get it anywhere else. The bar will be loaded if the wheels are off the ground, so if you want to try by jacking it up, removing a wheel, and then disconnecting the endlinks and you wind up not being able to pull the endlinks off, that's why.
2. So now that you have the endlinks disconnected from the swaybar, the vehicle lifted, at least one wheel removed, and the vehicle on jackstands with the jack out of the way, you're ready to think about removing the swaybar. You'll need to disconnect the swaybar mounts that secure it to the front crossmember. Words of caution: these bolts suck, use penetrating oil on the threaded side before trying to take them out. Personally I decided I didn't need to do this and broke both of them off in the crossmember. Yeah... but anyways, on cars like mine, produced before 8/97, the mount is held on by one 12mm bolt, screwed into a nut welded to the crossmember. Once that bolt is removed it hinges downward and you can pull out the bushings.
3. Now heres the part that will save you one big WTF. You need to remove the jacking plate at the center of the the crossmember, unless you happen to be installing headers at the same time, then you could take out the exhaust instead. On my car, the front two bolts had a free nut on the other side, the rear two bolts were more of the screw directly into the crossmember dealies (yeah I broke one of those too). I'm not even positive you could get a new nut on the otherside if you were to drill out the old bolt, so try REAL hard to not break both of these.
4. With the jacking plate removed, you should be able to just pull and turn from there on out to remove the bar. With the bar out, then installation is the reverse of removal. Just be sure to grease the new bushings. Even if you had gotten the old bar out without using ramps, you'll want to bust those out to finish connecting the endlinks, way more trouble then it would be worth to try to get those in there with the vehicle lifted.
Alright well I think that covers everything... I didn't take any pictures because I didn't want to mess with washing my hands before every picture, but if someone would like to volunteer a picture of the underside of their front end I'd be happy to draw some arrows on it and post it for reference.