yea mines touching hard on mine

 

Bolts are definitely torqued properly.


Enkei EKM3's

What do you mean by grind the sleeves? I agree that grinding that bit off the torsion bar is probably the best solution, I'll have to do that this summer. As for the washers that was my original thought but the bolts supplied with the kit are quite short I don't think you would get enough usable thread through the nut if you used washers.

Your right.


Can't tell from that angle of the pic if it's touching or not.

 

That was actually from my *New Exhaust* thread.
BTW....note the *standoffs* in the bolt mounts. Those keep the bar away from the arms. The OP seemed to have those ground down or flattened. That may be his problem.

 

The sleeves that the bolts run through on the sway bar. Powell used to grind them down flush with the sway bar but he stopped doing it for some reason.. All you really need to do is grind down the rear sleeves flush. The front ones fit right into the holes.

 

I see what you mean. Yah that would work none of mine are ground down and like your saying the ones closer to the front of the car fit into the hole but the ones closer to the back of the car act like a washer cantilevering the bar.

 

This true. The beam touches at the attachment point and the V beam. The bar is part of the V beam and it doesnt matter. If it offends you grind the V beam away but it so does not matter. It doesnt bang there - it cant, but if it does your bar is loose, the bolts are not tight enough. Even dealers struggle to install the sway bar ( beleive it or not) which is a simple 5 minute install. Torquing the bolts in very important, many folks dont and thats a shame. 40 to 50 ft lbs is good.

 

I bought my street bar used and it had slight rub marks in the same locations as yours. so when I installed in I also noticed that the bar slightly rubs exactly where urs does.

Nothing I can do about it so I left it go.

Bar still does the job it is intended to do

 

I am not sure where you are buying your bars from; it is possible they are being copied. The fabricator likes the sleeve proud to make the weld *********** better, and it they are too long, then it is possible they would stand off the nut plate. Let me know via PM or email where and when you purchased your bar and when and I can figure out if there is an issue, Tom G has it covered.

Fakemeanrepresent - that s a jackass remark "poor quality control" when in fact the welder is trying to be sure that there is maximum weld *********** into the sleeve, and the jig was changed to permit that. He certainly was not thinking overall how the bar installs. For Tom G he needs to check the stand off to the nut plate, and getting back to me with some answers will enable me to look at what the issues are.

I can add a bend to clear the v beam, even though it doesnt matter that it touches, but then the bar will loose some of its effectiveness and will hang down lower... etc.

These bars have been in use since 2005 on the Time Attack Cobalt and never once have we had issues other than the "touches the V beam"
I have had a number of bars incorrectly installed and nut plates installed wrong (upside down)

In each of those cases even though it was not my fault that folks installed them incorrectly, I have sent out new nut plates...

 

One production run the welder ground all the sleeves flush. That was not supposed to be done. He thought it was better that way. In fact I cant see it makes a difference. The idea is to make the bar as best can be done, integral with the twisting beam. Thats why it is bolted through its core with sleeved joints. Putting a washer in between the bar would lead to "itching" and loose bolts. Re Torquing after initial use is a good idea. Just like with new alloy wheels after first install.

 

correct.

 

Tom G I notice that your pedders are really corroded. I have not seen that before,and I always thought that in Alberta they did not use salt on the roads. The corrosion is not good. One reason I no longer drive my delta in winter. I Got a Jbody wntr btr to sacrifice to the salt gods lol

 

last thoughts. I had a customer who had banging and clunking on his car,(a TC) after Pedders install. He did not have a rear bar. There is a TSB for clunks and banging for TC which is 7 pages or so long. We put on Powergrid end links as his end links were bad. Still a problem He had me take off the Pedders and put back his stock springs, and he was happy.

Not my solution, but I just put it out there to let you know that it could be something completley different.

 

Here is a great picture of the length of the sleeves from when I first put the bar on. The sleeves stick out of the bar by about 1/8th of an inch maybe a bit more on both sides of the bar (i.e. all four bolt holes on both sides of each bolt holes)

 

Thank you for chiming in on this. I do understand what you are saying about having a better surface to weld to. However i feel that the bar not being in contact with the trailing arm would just put even more stress on the sleeve welds IMO. I am not saying that i think they will pull through, nor have I ever heard of anybodies bar pulling through, but the thought is there.. I have 2 friends with the same bar, both of there's are sitting flush and do not touch the beam.

Here is a picture of mine when i installed it.


As you can see there is a good 1/8th inch gap between the bar and the arm.

Another pic showing the cap and contact.


I did ended up just tightening it down anyway as i know the paint is going to get trashed anyway.. I will be grinding my rear sleeves down in the next week week before it gets painted and goes on the new car. I will post results here. Don't get me wrong it blows other bars away as far as performance, but fitment isn't ideal..

 

I talked to the fabbie just now, and I am concerned in the last batch that the sleeve is so long that it clamps hard on the nut plate, but does not lock down on the twisting beam, but does clear the V beam I have my car here, with the latest run bar on it and I will check. You can reach me directly at my hotmail.com address, qwikredline@.
So two issues. Clamping to the beam and then touching the V beam. While I am unconcerned personally about it touching, I will look at the jig and see if I can move things around. If I space the beam at the clamping plate, then it will miss the v beam but not lock to the beam, which is very important... it must clamp down hard on the trailing arm of the beam along the bar tube length. Grinding down the sleeve so its flush could work in the meantime. Waht we can do going forward is weld then machine the sleeve after welding...thanks for your thoughtful response and great pictures!

In any event anyone who has purchased a bar from me can discuss it directly and we can go from there. As wangspeed says, assuming its all installed correctly the bar works fine. Hope this helps.

 

Mine are starting to rust as well, the rears apparently
Bund alot

 

Unfortunately they do salt the roads here in Alberta. I drive the Cobalt year round as it is my DD. So far as I can tell it's just surface rust. Even when I pulled my stock springs off after just ~10K Miles they were already starting to rust. I wash the car on a biweekly basis and I do my best to hose off the under body but there isn't much else I can do. I figure it will be years before the rust actually gets to a point where it could effect the springs performance otherwise most cars in AB would have serious problems lol

 

have them rubber dipped...

 

I just asked as I have seen broken springs at the rear H&R and someone yesterday at our OCC day at the shop said their stock rear springs broke. i have never heard of stock springs breaking to teel the truth. Ugh for salt...
I will have answers for you on rear bar fitment latest by the end of the week, Monday if possible...

 

Nice to see that your a fabricator who cares about their product and stands behind it unlike a few other vendors I know. The bar works great and I'm not at all concerned about it rubbing lol but I though that the very slight banging noise might be coming from where it hits the torsion beam. After putting the rubber pieces in I haven't heard anything yet but we shall see.

 

its steel...rust sucks

i agree with your vendor statement

 

Yea wish I could afford a beater

 

comon chris 400 for a wntr btr...for you thats one less round of beers a week.....

 

Maybe next year lol

 

so after review i thought I would look at increasing the wall thickness of the sleeve. But that will be an issue to insert into the bar on a 1.0 though. And the sleeve does not now go through the hole at the rear of the twisting beam as the hole is small. The front hole however is much bigger and the current sleeve goes through....so cant make the sleeve that big. so back to re thinking. Maybe just shorter sleeves like we used to do and figure out how to make good welds differently. Monday . Thanks for the generally thoughtful input...