I have a question for those who have upgraded their rear sway bars. Have any of you had problems with broken rear sway bar brackets?

The reason I ask is this: my former car had an awesome aftermarket hollow rsb available, but it was pretty much 100% garaunteed that your mounting brackets would break because the bar was so stiff.

Anybody run into that kind of problem?

 

I've yet to hear anyone running into this problem , maybe the previous car had a design flaw with those brackets , no bar made for a particular bar would be so stiff as to break mounts , imo.

 

I don't think it was a design flaw, it just wasn't made to handle such a stiff bar. From what I read and saw, I'll avoid these problems at all cost.

 

Oh yeah , why would a company make a bar soo stiff to actually break mounts? did they not test fit on the car? somewhere improper engineering caused that. good luck.

 

Yeah good call. I'd say it was more along the lines of the aftermarket company going for too much gusto on the bar.

Anyway, it's good to hear that this isn't happening on xBs. I may start looking into reducing some body roll.

 

My Cusco WRX FSB and RSB broke both the front and rears...............

 

I have the Progress Rear Sway Bar (which is the best available, imo) and it's been working fine. The mounts don't seem to be bending at all

 

I'd like to hear more about this................

 

Thanks! How long have you had the bar on?

 

Hmm...
ptuning says the progress bar is 19mm, but partshippers says it's 22mm.
Is the progress bar an add-on or not?

 

The way rear sway bars attach on the xB it would be mighty hard for them to break anything. Even if they were 4" tubes that never allowed any sway... The design of the rear suspension and the way that the rear bars mount, this should never be an issue. I would however recommend that you buy a front and rear sway bar that are matched. Don't just buy any rear bar and leave the front one stock.

On the street, it's just not safe and predictable, in racing you may want to do that to get your car to work better on a particular course... I'd just be really wary of it on the street. So far I've have great luck with the Hotchkis setup. Very predictable, no dead spots, they allow enough roll to get good weight transfer and they don't rebound like mad if you're in a slalom. They make it VERY easy to go hot into a corner and recover. I've unloaded the rear (braking) going into a corner numerous times while turning... which causes tremendous over steer, and been able to recover by simply letting off the brakes. I've had rear sway bars that would cause too much rebound and they'd cause the suspension to unload again as you got off the brakes because they were too stiff.

See my thread https://www.scionlife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=51785 and look at the pic of the body roll I have. I'm doing about 42mph in that picture on a reasonably tight right hand turn. Unless you are going with adjustable coilovers, I wouldn't go with anything stiffer than the Hotchkis bars. The Cusco bars might be a good match for adjustable coilovers... but would overpower the stock or TRD struts.[/url]

 

LMAO. LSDs are great for FWD cars.


Ok, back on topic.
Thanks for the info on brackets/attachment. That's good to know. I haven't actually seen the aftermarket parts in person, nor have I looked at the current swaybar. (I'm a visual learner. ) But that's great info. Anyone have pictures from a RWB install?


So you think that just an addon bar for the rear is not a good idea for street use? Very interesting.

 

Cusco front was mounted using the stockers; it eventually broke the connecting bolt. Rears were mounted using GT Spec solid end links; the rubber portions of the link were torn out, along with the bolt. I upgraded those to adjustable rears and it solved the problem.

 

looks fun man. im gonna have to try that sometime. at least once i get the new suspension and more power

 

Well i have news for ya all..... I got the TRD rear sway bar for my tC and installed it about 6 months ago... Last week i heard this clunking and rattling from the left rear suspension....a little inspection revealed that the bracket holding the bar had snapped of in the middle. and this is the bracket that came with the bar not the stock one.... so im really mad cuz TRD supposed to be all great... I have it on the track setting but its not like im a crazy driver around the corners or anything...

 

if you noticed this is xA/xB which is a different setup on the rsb then the tC which has endlinks...

 

I wouldn't worry about breaking anything, as far as I'm concerned, Toyota wouldn't sell a bar that would damage the suspension, and the Progress bar is pretty much identical to the TRD bar (except for $100 or so)

In any case, I wouldn't worry, it's a pretty beefy setup back there.