u/BicycleMage

Not a hypercar in sight :D

This is a follow-up post to my initial inquiry here.

Today was finally the day. I gathered all of the torque specs I could find from every corner of the internet, wrote up detailed work instructions, got my brother to help me, and we hashed it out.

We hit some big snags, namely getting the rear subframe low enough to thread the new bar through the gap between it and the unibody. We unclipped all 3 ABS sensor wire clips on both sides and unbolted the brake line mount on the knuckle as well to give us more wiggle room. We had to loosen all four rear subframe mounting bolts, around 1/2” up front and 1” in the rear, with the floor jack supporting the subframe. Then we lowered the subframe gently on the jack until it almost rested on the loosened bolts. This gave us enough room to get the new sway bar through, but we had a hell of a time getting it in position. We eventually had to remove the sway bar bushing brackets themselves (circled in pic 3 above), which gave us enough clearance on each side to finally get the bar in place. Second to last pic shows the clearance we were working with. The new sway bar got pretty scuffed up going in and out multiple times trying to get it fitted, so I hope that isn’t an issue down the line but I’ll keep an eye on it regardless.

We opted to replace all four sway bar bushing saddle nuts because one of them was ugga’d too hard and we eventually needed to use a nut splitter to deform it enough to hammer a socket on and get it out of there. As a side note, be sure to grease the inner diameter of the bushing liberally with the supplied grease packet, then install the new bushings with the split facing the rear of the vehicle, matching the OEM install direction.

After doing a tire rotation while we were already there, getting the wheels on the car, and dropping it, we torqued down the lug nuts and backed the car onto some ramps to torque down the end link nuts, which were surprisingly easy to access.

The torque specs we used came from a variety of sources online including RalliTek, XVForums, and snippets of the official service work instructions, and are as follows:

Sway bar bushing saddle nuts - 24ft/lb

Rear sway bar end link nuts - 34ft/lb

Rear subframe mounting bolts - 107ft/lb

Initial impressions after ~30 miles of backroads and an impromptu AutoX session in a big abandoned parking lot are that I can confidently say that this upgrade significantly alters the feel of the vehicle for the better. I notice way less steering input being translated into body roll when making small maneuvers, and throwing the car into turns shows a marked improvement in flatness and grip. I can feel the car rotating immediately, and the fulcrum point seems to have moved forward enough that I feel the rear of the car rotating much faster than the front during spirited cornering. I felt the rear begin to step out a couple of times, which was incredible considering the battle against understeer I’ve been fighting. I can’t wait to test it more tonight. I was able to use trail braking very effectively to rotate the car much more intensely in the parking lot, sliding around on asphalt whereas before getting the rear loose used to be a gravel-only affair.

I opted to disregard Whiteline’s warning and installed the bar on its stiffest (closest to the bushing) setting, as I had read some comments and posts on other forums saying the soft setting was not effective enough.

Once this is posted I’ll make a comment tagging those users who were interested in my last post, and I am free to answer any questions you might have in these comments or in the DMs, since I know this job is kind of a mystery to most people. I would be more than happy to share my research, work instructions, and whatever else might help you out in the future!

I keep finding places to replicate one of my favorite memories IRL within BeamNG!

On Main Street in the small town of Brownsville, Oregon there is a classic Coca-Cola advertisement painted on an old brick wall. Some friends and I came across it on a bicycle tour many years ago and took a photo of our bikes leaned up against the mural together as a memento. Years later my partner and I were out for a scenic drive in our then-new Subaru and stumbled upon that very same mural but freshly repainted, so we quickly pulled in and took a photo to match the first.

And now I keep finding spots to recreate that photo in BeamNG while exploring in my main config which recreates the current build of my IRL car, specifically in different mod maps. First in Las Colinilas de Vapor 3.3, and tonight in the new Skeleton Coast map (which is absolutely amazing, btw). I've attached the original photo and all of those which came forth from it.

If there are any mod map makers out there, do consider adding your own version for us to find!