best sway bars for a 70 chevelle?

[daygoslow]

heard lots of different opinions, but i cant seem to decide. any input is appreciated.

thanks,
donald

[daygoslow]

no one?

[4MuscleMachines]

IMO, the Hotchkis bars are the best for this car, they are engineered very well. Also, the front bar is hollow making it lighter yet strong.

[Derek69SS]

What is "best" depends entirely on the rest of your setup.

Sway-bars should be the absolute last part you decide on for your suspension combo, after you lay out your plans for the springs, shocks, spindles, etc.

It doesn't hurt anything to install them first while you save money for the rest of it, but the combo should never be planned around sway-bar selection.

[daygoslow]

i honestly want the car to be a car that can tear up a 1/4 mile strip and then fly through the twisties as well. i have factory upper and lower rear control arms that i boxed in myself and i have eurythane bushings throughout the car. right now i have a factory front sway bar and no rear. the car has an eibach pro kit and 73-77 A-body front disc brakes and spindles. the car weighs about 3750 with me in it. for now i have two sets of shocks for the car; a set of edelbrocks and a set of comp engineering 3-way adjustables, which i swap between depending on what the car is doing more of at the time. (i usually run the edelbrocks unless i am trying to get a new best at the track)

[vintageracer]

The Hotchkis stuff is nice and also pricey. For CHEAP you can go to the local JY and get a 1 1/4 inch front bar off a 78-81 Trans Am. Be sure to get the bracket bolts and straps. Probably cost you $20 for the front. This is a bolt on.

For the rear, the factory rear sway bar is still available from GM for about $100. You will then need to buy the sway bar conversion kits from the repo parts supplier's so you can "box" the rear lower control arms and mount the GM sway bar. About $25 for the parts and your welding abiltiy.

Sway bars are very important so choose wisely. Given the fact that you are mixing component manufacturers for your parts, I am not to sure that you are going to get the benefits of one sway bar manufacturer over another. The Hotchkis front hollow bar does say weight. You really should purchase a designed package from one manufacturer if you are not intimate with suspension technology and stay with ALL that manufacturers parts.

You said you installed Urethane bushings "throughout" the car. If you installed urethane bushings in the 2 eyes on the top of the rearend housing, remove them and replace with rubber. The rear suspension geometry on a 70 Chevelle is poor with inherent binding due to the desingn. The installation of poly makes it worse especially if you use poly bushings on top of the rear end where the rear of the upper control arms bolt to the rearend.

As far as drag race and the twisty's, you can't have it all! Decide which is more important and build the car to suit THAT need!

[daygoslow]

ive already boxed my control arms and i have heard more than a couple people complain of breaking the factory style rear sway bar. which is one reason i was looking into the hotchkis extreme rear sway bar. mostly i want the car to be a good cruiser but i still want it to get on down when it hits the track.

[Norm Peterson]

Are the people who are experiencing rear sta-bar breakage pulling the wheels on launch? If so, and you're expecting to solve a breakage problem with a thicker rear bar by increasing its strength, you'll almost certainly end up with a bar that's too stiff for best handling. FWIW, once the front wheels leave the ground, all of the engine's torque reaction goes through the rear suspension as it tries to resist the roll. I think that loads the rear suspension in roll about three times as severely as you'd ever be likely to in a turn even if you're really hustling through it.

As it is, that poly bushing and boxed control arm combo already acts as a fair-sized rear bar, possibly like one that's thicker than the 22 mm bar that was F-41 spec on my 1979 Malibu (that was matched to a 32 mm solid front bar BTW). If it's already noticeably stiffer in roll (corners enough flatter than before to notice by SOTP) you don't need it any stiffer. Bolting on one of those huge drag-strip-only bars for your quarter mile trips might pay off in that activity, but I'll strongly advise against leaving that sort of thing in place for any other driving.


Norm

[Goatman]

My car left the ground every time out and all I had was a stock sway bar (BMR arms) and it never broke....

10.09@131, 3400lbs, stock suspension...

[daygoslow]

from hotchkis' site:
The Hotchkis Extreme Sport Rear Sway Bar, is designed to eliminate the hard mounted factory design rear bar, allowing for better suspension articulation in extreme usage vehicles. This system allows the rear sway bar to slightly pivot reducing fatigue and stress placed on the sway bar in the factory design.
Specs: 1 5/16" Tubular Bar with two stiffness settings. Includes axle mounts, Stainless u-bolts, greasable bushings, and end links.

i understand what ya'll are saying but if the hotchkis extreme bar works as they claim it to, then it should work well in most conditions.

[Goatman]

Except the last thing you want in a drag car is your rear suspension moving around...

Only thing it should do is squat and recover.