Sway-A-Way Torsion Bars

[72bluNblu]

Your suspension looks very familiar to mine haha. I have the same shocks and UCA, even the same upper bump stop. Soon to have the same LCAs. Not sure what you are using for Sway bars, I have Hellwig. I am using Hotchkis for the rest of the suspension basically.

From your picture it looks like the torsion bar adjustment lever has a lot more clearance than what I am getting.

I have the Hellwig bars as well. 55905 up front, but I run an E-body rear bar, #6908. It's a little larger than the A-body bar and works decently with my 1/2" offset springs.

I think the fact that your pictures are from below is making the distance to the frame looks smaller. My pictures are from above the adjusting lever, which makes the gap look bigger than it really is. On my car that gap is smaller than it looks in the picture. And they are different bars, so, it is possible the offset is different.

Damn guys. You two hurt my brain trying to keep up with your conversation? I have had thoughts of lowering stance by an upgraded torsion bar setup. You guys confirmed my fears that I could easily screw this up. I have even considered a full QA1 type suspension upgrade (That of course is then not comparing apples to apples.) on a Pro Street E-body build. This thread certainly gives some incite on what to expect.

It's not as bad as it sounds. You increase the size of the torsion bars to increase your wheel rate. The increased wheel rate means you use less suspension travel. You use the "leftover" suspension travel to lower the car. The bigger the torsion bars, the more you can lower. Once the new ride height is set, you re-center the range of travel around the new ride height by using a smaller lower bumpstop and a taller upper bumpstop.

Assemble the suspension uppers, lowers, and spindle. back the adjustment screw down so the adjustment lever is sitting on the threaded flat with the ball of the adjuster just inside of the lever. Take that large upper bump stop out and install a factory one or drop the suspension down to where that bump stop would be. At this position the bar should slide in. This is the way I install every bar I use. You may have to go up or down a tad but not much at all

Yup, that's the procedure as per the factory service manual. And with bars larger than 1" with non-factory hex offsets it's the completely wrong way to do it. If you change the hex offset on the bars the FSM procedure is pretty much useless, especially with tubular LCA's. With large torsion bars the angle of install on the LCA is nearly the same as the final ride height.

It's also MUCH easier to install the LCA on the torsion bar without the spindles and UCA's already connected. There's no reason to hook those up first.

 

[72bluNblu]

The adjusting lever is not being pushed on in those photos above. That is just the position it ends up in due to the clocking of the bar. I am holding the LCA up with my hand just to show that is where the LCA ends up with the adjustment bolt all the way in.
View attachment 1715862210

Here it is on the bench
View attachment 1715862211

Sorry for the lousy picture, but here's one of my LCA's at ride height. It's hard to tell, but there's really only about 5/8" to 3/4" between the top of the adjusting lever and the bottom of the frame rail. If you look at the angle of the adjust lever it's a little less angle than what appears to be on yours, but it's not a huge amount. And yours are with the adjusters all the way in, which probably isn't where they'll be at ride height.