5 Attachment(s)
Swaybar Link Disconnect Brackets
The other day I was out looking for another cheap mod to pass the time and came up with making a set of brackets to hold the swaybar links up out of the way when disconnected offroad.
I looked around the garage to see what I had laying around and noticed I had a couple 1/2-13x4" bolts and the light bulb lit up.
I proceeded to disconnect my swaybar links to measure the distance up to the side of the frame where I would mount the bolts. Using my trusty Sharpie marker I marked the spot while allowing my swaybar to remain relatively level. I then drilled the spot and brought the hole to a whopping 1/2". As I brought out the tap, the darn hole was just a tad too big to tap some threads into. Grrrrrrrr! Back to the drawing board...
At this point I decided I would just drill through the frame and tighten it down with a nut on both sides. Well, then Mr. Murphy (Murphy's Law) reared its ugly head...again. Now my 4" bolts weren't long enough. So I needed a break, and a beer, then I proceeded to walk to my neighbors house to see what he had in his garage. We got to talking about the project I had going on and lo and behold he happened to have a stick of 1/2-13 All-Thread stashed somewhere. BOOM! I was back in business. I double-timed it across our fresh cut grass and got back to work.
Once I drilled through the frame and put a nut on the back side of the All-Thread, I measured with my trusty eyeball to the length I needed, plus extra, to hold the swaybar links. After getting the correct lengths dialed in with the links going on and coming off several times to make sure, I removed them and headed to my drill press to drill out the holes for the Cotter-Pins.
I had everything mocked up and it worked like a champ on both sides! w00t! I was so excited that I didn't get the total length measurements of my All-Thread. Different links will require different lengths anyway. I'm running Rock Krawler links and they are the bomb (all biases aside).
Let's get to some eye-candy of my finished product:
Before disconnecting:
Attachment 785
Passenger side (driver side looks the same):
[ATTACH=CONFIG]786[/ATTACH
Disconnected:
Attachment 788
Attachment 789
After the install I decided to touch up my handy work by painting the final product to blend it into the frame. Needless to say my neighbor, whom I mentioned earlier, came over the next day and didn't even notice what the hell I did. Succes!
