rear sway bar

[oldspowered67C10]

Installed a street rod style rear sway bar, what do you guys think?

[63 & 64 Bowties]

Nice work. Looks like you've put a lot of time into it. Interesting choice on exhaust routing. It won't interfere with your bed panels will it?

Oh and, I think it's time to change the date on your camera

[N2TRUX]

Tell us more about it. Is it a universal kit, or did you build it from scratch?

[fastbagged68]

It would have been better to make it as wide as possible. I made mine wider then my frame rails. Speedway Engineering has a ton of info on swaybars.

[chevy_mike]

I also noticed your panhard bar. You have the frame mount side on top of the frame. I am assuming the pictures are at ride hieght. If so, you want your panhard bar level to the ground, not at an angle like you have it.

It is best to run the longest panhard bar you can, to minimize side to side movement as it goes thru its travel. If you moved it to under the frame and ran it over to the pass. side trailing arm, you would have a much better setup and better handling.

My .02 worth.

[Inverter]

The end links look to be about 2 feet apart.As stated earlier,the endlinks need to be much further out toward the wheels to provide any anti-roll benefit. Looks like the panhard was setup at full dump.
Speedway does indeed have good info and products.

[Hottrucks]

I like project pics because they make me think........in this case I think I would flip that sway bar to behind the axle and under the frame use 2 hym joints (maybe front end hanger with the rubber) into the frame and make it long enough to be on the outside of the frame but inside the exhaust......that being said I would like to see how you got your exhaust out there????

all that being said I wounder if there is a way to make it double as a panard bar?? that would limit your left right movement ??? hmmmmmm

but by the look of the boxed fame you have other plans for this truck??

[oldspowered67C10]

Its a universal weld together kit from Paul Hortons welder series out of Canada. They come in various lengths and this one is 26". Its a 3/4" bar splined at both ends. Actually the one from Speedway was the one I initially wanted but its been on back order forever.

Regarding the width of the bar, if you look at factory rear bars on trucks they are always narrower than the frame rails so I doubt it makes much difference and truthfully the merits of a rear sway bar on a truck where the vast majority of the weight in the rear is so low in relation to the height of the wheels is questionable at best and is really only for handling tuning rather than controlling body roll. Besides, since I have no room on the outside of the frame rails due to exhaust routing and out board mounted shocks this was the best compromise I could come up with so I went with it.

As far as the panhard bar goes, thats something that I had done long before I took the body off and it works well, only about 1/4" of side movement from full raise to full dump. Also keep in mind that while having the panhard bar level is good for controlling side to side movement thats by no means the whole story. If you raise the axle mounting point in relation to the frame rail(lowering the vehicle) you need to raise the frame mounting point as close equally as possible to maintain the geometry. Another tidbit of information is that a low mounted panhard bar will increase body roll in corners and will typically make the vehicle tighter(push) in the corners as well as making steering turn in a bit slower. While most of these factors dont really matter for most of us its still something to think about.

Ill post some more pics to show the exhaust routing as well as some other stuff to give you an idea of what direction Im going with the truck. Ive already done a coilover conversion on the front and am working on one for the rear as well as doing my best to increase frame rigidity.

Anyways, thankls for the input and heres the pics.

[SCOTI]

That's a great build right there.

[protrash64]

Cool stuff....what brand are your lower control arms?

[Hottrucks]

ahhh I see you also moved the mufflers outside the frame rail nice touch wll you be able to rotate them up and down and tuck them inside the bed side.....I see that you routed the exhaust thru the frame rail and built a new X member, nice looks like you have one hell of a project going but your work looks great...what are you using for headers they look like a stock something or another??

[oldspowered67C10]

I cant remember the brand of the lower arms, but they were set up for factory spring and I modified them for coilovers, Im also going to make some tabs to make them work with a muscle bar from Air ride. I think I got the uppers from brothers trucks but its been awhile so I cant remember for sure.
The exhaust manifolds are the factory ones that came on a Olds 442 and are jet hot coated.
Thanks for the comments