Driving Impressions: Lower Stress Bar

[Kirk]

Well I FINALLY found a place that can manufacture the different components that I want to make a really decent lower stress bar system. I just ordered one set of parts. I should then have an update and some photos sometime next week with the new parts.

What I’m putting together is a main bar that’s 3/4" steel tube. I can source stainless steel (at 3X the cost though) for the main tube, but for now I’m going with yellow zinc plated steel. Attached at each end will be some heavy duty steel rod ends. These are rod ends that are beefier than the standard 3/8” items. They’ve got a larger threaded shank so they can be used with the large steel rod. These aren’t racing rod ends since they don’t really need to move much. Instead I’ve focused on getting nice strong and well constructed rod ends for the main bar. This should be a pretty heavy duty setup that will still allow adjustability for ease of installation.

The secondary side bars are going to look just like what I posted photos of recently. The exception is that I’ve figured I can go with one size larger rod end. That also allows me to go to a larger diameter rod. In addition I’ve switched to a different brand of aluminum rod ends that are more robust with a larger shank, like the steel rod ends used in the main bar. They’re silver though, not the pretty red I showed before. The static tensile strength of these rod ends is almost double that of the ones I’ve got on my car now.

More to come next week… photos and install notes.

Kirk