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After taking a good look at my sway bar I noticed the reason that my car dives so badly when trying to negotiate a turn. Some time in it's past it took a pretty good hit to the passenger side inner bracket which is probably what caused the drivers side of the bar to pop free of it's rubber bushing.

After considering trying to fix the bracket and replace the rubber bushings, I looked into some polyurethane bushings and decided that it would be cheaper and easier to go with some universal polyurethane sway bar bushings instead. And since I don't really car about keeping the car bone stock and original, this is what I came up with on my usual "Tight Wad" budget. I spent a total of $24 for the bushings and used some scrap steel angle iron and square tubing that I had.

After a test drive I'm happy to report that the diving is cured and it felt pretty good considering the fact that I'm sure the shocks are completely dead.

The Pics should show a couple before shots, a mock up shot where the brackets are just tacked together and a final.

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Neat job and very serviceable. Should handle a lot better.

If you guy's are going to this much trouble, why not just put a larger sway bar off of a different car on it and make it handle 100 times better? Craig was telling me an F body GM would work with a little adapting. Get rid of that 5/8" bar and put at least a 1" one on there. There's a LOT of body roll when going around corners on a T/L Packard.

Hi Turbo,

I'm a cheap SOB. I use what I've got laying around and it really only took a couple of hours of work. As far as handling goes, I'm not going to be carving any corners in the Clipper. That's what I have my R1 for .

It looks pretty good. Same basic idea (Universal bushing and a spacer) that I came up with. I am glad to hear it made a difference in the handling.

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Looks like we have something in common! I'm a cheap bastard by nature, so we must be cousins!

Actually, when there are good bushings on the sway bar, there is little body roll and the car goes around the corners almost flat. Of course we don't head into the corner in a four-wheel drift! WE always drive carefully and within the constraints of the law.

Randy, remember that some people don't just drive their cars, they DRIVE their cars!

I didnt really have a problem with the bushings originally used (even though mine needed to be replaced). The problem I had was the bent/broken brackets. Which appears to be a common problem as ever parts car I have looked at has had bent ones.

The solid block spacer I cam up with should prevent that problem in the future.

Keegan: That is a real nice way of mounting the front sway and the new bushing mounts that you made up.

The main mounting brackets for my sway bar were undamaged, but the outer clips on the a-arms were broken. So I sent for new sway bar bushings, and came up with this solution on securing the new outer sway bar bushings. I went to local hardward store and purchased some angle iron. Cut the angle iron mounted the new retaining brackets drilled and botled them to the a-arm.

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