Rear Sway Bar

[skateswitch97]

I was looking on mantapart and it looks like the offer a rear sway bar for 96 to present grand ams, but i thought gas did not have a rear sway bar? maybe someone already knows are someone who knows alittle more about this can check it out, let me know, thanks.

[dmbprep69]

Yeah well us 96-98s dont have brackets so they sell us a kit to put one in which connects to the A frame, naturalkonc3pt has one so ask him if u have any other questions

O yeah and I contacted mantapart over 2 weeks ago and they havent gotten back to me yet about the swaybar and disc conversion, so lemme know if u have any luck gettin hold of em!
Peace,
Andrew

[DontPassTheFence]

I figured that Mantapart's kit included the brackets necessary, but I have NO faith in them getting any parts to me. Maybe I should give them a call? I really really need a rear swaybar, understeer is not fun :(

[skateswitch97]

do either of you have a rear strut bar? i would like to see how much it would help, i think us three are running nearly the same set up which is sport springs, and thats it, i have a front sturt bar, helps alittle, but we have pretty much nothing for the back, i wanna change something soon..

[DontPassTheFence]

I have the kyb shocks out back, and Ive been trying to get a damn rear strut bar, but no lucky still; i keep missing the ones available on ebay (buy both the front and read for the cavalier, then use the rear brackets and the front bar, and setup work s as a perfect rear strut bar for a GA)

[ManktheTank19]

Originally posted by DontPassTheFence
I have the kyb shocks out back, and Ive been trying to get a damn rear strut bar, but no lucky still; i keep missing the ones available on ebay (buy both the front and read for the cavalier, then use the rear brackets and the front bar, and setup work s as a perfect rear strut bar for a GA)

How do you know a cavalier one will work :???:

[red98grandamse]

Originally posted by ManktheTank19
How do you know a cavalier one will work :???:

I was thinking the same thing

[DontPassTheFence]

Oh, you guys must have missed that post; I dont remember who posted up; but someone with a manta green 96-98 GAGT bought the package from an ebay dealer (55$ for both bars) and said he used the rear bar end links and the front bar piece and it worked fine on his car, and he has spare parts to make a front bar for a slightly smaller car (probably would fit a sunflower/cavy)

Ill see if I can find the original postq

[skateswitch97]

rear sturt bars shoudlnt be hard to find rsm and mantapart carry them i just havent purchased one, i might with my tax return

[red98grandamse]

but the problem with mantapart that most people find is that if they dont have it in stock when you want it, you may just wait a couple months for them to get one to you. theyre really good at that sometimes.

[ManktheTank19]

I don't think RSM has them, but they sell Strut bars

[SPECIALGAGT]

If you could mount a two-piece strut-bar on a GA, and mark it in such a way as to see how much it moved side-to-side in a real-road situation, how much movement do you think you would detect? Weren't those bars first developed for ricers? Do GA-s need'em? I've really wrung out my GA in some dicey situations (off-road a couple times!) and I have not found any busted welds along the fire-wall or at the the top of the shock-mounts to indicate that the geometry has moved around any.

[Foxy]

Copied and Pasted from before..

Basically, a strut tower bar ties together the strut towers with a bar, and makes them maintain position relative to each other better - it makes the car stiffer.

When you go around a corner, the outside front tire gets loaded with more weight than the inside one. Pretty much any chassis will flex. For instance, if you assume a 100% front wheel weight transfer (the inside front tire is lifted up in the air), for a 2700 lb car pulling 1.0 gs, there's about 333 lbs of force pulling the outside strut tower out.

The strut tower bar 'pulls' the two towers together - most of the force they experience is tension, not compression (but they do experience both, for instance, when going over a bump in a straight line, or going down an incline at an angle, like exiting a driveway).

The 333lbs doesn't sound significant, but it's about 12% of the weight of the car in perspective. It doesn't really affect the chassis much once, but over the lifetime of the car, it'll fatigue the metal and end up flexing more and more. The strut bar, by pulling in the other strut tower, doubles the amount of metal you have resisting the flex.

Even that amount of weight can affect your camber, making you lose it at the worst possible time. Even a small deflection can result in the loss of an entire degree of camber. Thus, a strut bar can help your suspension work better.

A stiffer car will notice less benefit from a strut bar, unless the suspension is heavily modified and needs less flex to work effectively. A softer, sloppier suspension can mask some of the chassis flex.

Strut bars aren't just for ricers ;) I have no idea how torsionally stiff the GA's are, but even stiff cars can benefit from them (for instance, the CTS Speed GT race car has a triangulating front strut bar bracing the front strut towers). You won't bust welds, but given enough hard cornering, you'll slowly distort the chassis. It's a simple mod that has a minor, but worthwhile effect, especially for the $50 people seem to be paying for it.