Driving Impressions: Lower Stress Bar

[Kirk]

Franco, thanks for the good feedback on how to DIY this mod. I followed your lead and made one of these bars. Just a couple notes on the basic mod:

1. I was able to fit in a 1" bar. Look for solid aluminum round stock. I had to go to a specialty metal supplier to get this as hardware stores and Home Depot won't have it.

2. I had to remove the metal plate and one anti-sway bar mount to get the 1" bar up in there.

3. I polished the aluminum first and then clear coated it. Sure you'll never see it, but at least I know it looks pretty...

After I got the basic lower stress bar in place I decided to take it the next step. I call these the Bristol Bars... :-P Basically I made two more bars out of 3/4" solid aluminum bar stock. At one end I threaded in some custom modified eye bolts to mount to the SAME bolt as the main lower stress bar. These eye bolts allowed for some adjustment when installing and also allowed me to slide into the slot in the support so that no permanent modifications were required. I then attached the Bristol bars at the rear-most mounting points of the metal plate. This further ties in the rear suspension to another support piece at the rear of the car. I think this kind of "triangulation" of the rear suspension will really help to stiffen it up. Basically it totally reinforces that flimsy metal plate that is otherwise supposed to tie everything together. Plus, with everything made out of aluminum there is a minimal weight penalty.

Here's a photo of my "assistant" showing off the pieces of the system, the Ernie Bar and two Bristol Bars, making up a complete lower stress bar system: