Saturday, February 21, 2009

Front Agency Power end-links and sway bar install

In a previous post I installed rear end-links and a rear sway bar so in this post we will do the front. I found the front end to be easier to install, however it requires you to pull more parts off the car to get at the sway bar mounts. Once I figured this out the install was a piece of cake though.
First get the annoying plastic protector removed.


2nd, remove the jacking plate. There are four bolts in the center and two on each side. Note that the sizes of these differ. The front most bolts have nuts on top which you need to grab onto.



Next, remove the big 'u' or 'c' shaped piece. There is a total of 11 bolts (two different sizes), 2 plastic covers with two plastic clips each. Sorry, I don't have pictures of me taking it off. First remove 3 exposed bolts from each side then move back and remove the plastic cover by removing the two clips. Once the plastic cover is removed this will expose another bolt, remove it. Keep going back and you will see another bolt that is deeper into the frame. Loosen this bolt but don't remove it. Now remove the bolt from the front center of the piece. To get it out pull it forward. The ends of each side slide into an area on the frame (remember those bolts that were loosened but not removed?)



Here is everything removed. This is a little further in the process since I've got the sway bar and end-links off but it shows everything including the new sway bar and links.

This is what the driver side looks like with the 'U' shaped piece and jack mount removed.

Passenger side:

Next, locate the mounting brackets and bushings for the sway bar. Loosen the bolts on both sides, but don't remove them.

Locate the end-links on each side and remove the nuts to get the end-links off the sway bar and control arm. When doing this you might end up with the nut and bolt spinning together (this happened on the passenger side but not the driver side for me). I got a pair of pliers and used that to hold the bolts from rotating.

Once the end-links have been removed go ahead and remove the bolts for the mounting brackets. The sway bar should be free and you can pull it out. Seen below is the stock sway bar, end-links, new sway bar, new end-links, mounting brackets, and finally, bushings.

I've put the 'lub' grease stuff on the rubber bushing and stuck both bushing on the sway bar. I then placed the mounting brackets over the bushings, and bolted the brackets back to the frame, I have not torqued the bolts yet, this way I can move the sway bar around easily. Next I attached each of the end-links. I had to rotate the sway bar up to get the end-links to line up. Sorry, I don't have pictures of each of these steps, but it's really easy.




Attach the 'U' piece back to the frame. As you can see trying to get to the mounting brackets is almost impossible without removing this piece. I am sure you could get at the mounting brackets with the right tools though.





That's it... The last thing to note is to make sure the sway bar it centered. My end-links have a good amount of travel so it's possible to not have it centered.

1 comment:

Steve said...

Damn dude - you're getting to be a pro at ripping your car apart! I'm impressed!