Broken Rear Sway Bar

#1

My driver side rear sway bar mount ripped off the lower arm. I have no idea when it did this. Not good. I was told that there is a kit to prevent this in the future, who makes that, and how do I fix what has already been ripped off? The car has a huge push, is that a characteristic that the car will have when the sway bar is off?

Is a strut tower brace needed? I don’t have one, and not sure if that is a mandatory type item or something that costs money and does nothing.

Anything else suspension related that I need to beef up before it rips off the car?

-Scott

#2

Scott;

Thats common on E30’s. It’s a easy fix. You can make your own bracket and reweld it to the trailing arm or you can buy a kit and weld that on. It’s basically a small triangular piece with a whole for the shock.
When I receive my Ireland Engineering rear bar it came with the kit.

Brad

#3

bimmerworld and turner sells reinforcement kits.

#4

weld on tabs came with both my suspension techniques bars and my IE bars. The ST bars came with junk hardware all around and the upper body mounts tore out after a season of autox. The IE bars came with new billet body mounts and hopefully the links won’t rust away like the ST ones. Maybe ST bars are better now that they raised the price from 290 to 440. Anyway get the body mount reinforcements also. The lower mount reinforcement were just steel triangle that weld over the tabs on the control arms. Whoever is doing your welding should be able to fabricate them for you, or just put a beefier tab on since yours is already ripped off.

#5

The best sway bar pickup point reinforcements are those sold by Turner that triangulate the loads. They are much better than the flat plates furnished with the IE sway bar kit.

With the rear sway disconnected, the car will probably push.

#6

Get the reinforcement kit for the trailing arm from Ireland Engineering, or whoever. Do you have the rear swaybar MOUNT REINFORCEMENT kit? The one that bolts through the rear trunk floor? If not, that’ll be the next part that breaks. Get the reinforcemnt kit from Ireland.

#7

I have done a poor job describing the break. I just went and looked at the car.

The sway bar mounts in two places into what looks like the trunk floor. That is not the problem. The problem is the drivers side mount where it bolts onto what I will call the lower controll arm. There is a threaded heim joint. First, it ripped the weld right off the lower controll arm, so the hardware was just dangling. Now it appeasrs that the threaded part came un-threaded and flew off somewhere, so I just have the threaded part and nothing else left. I took a picture if I can ever figure out how to upload it here, I’ll do it tomorrow.

#8

Maybe a well sorted out car purchase was/is the answer.

Spec E30 101: Those triangular tabs HAVE to be welded/reinforced or they’ll…ripoff. Duh.

Find a shop and weld them on.

Next, purchase the Ireland sway bar kit and install the bar correctly to the floor of the trunk.

RP

#9

BigKeyserSoze wrote:

Most folks have strut braces. The one my car came with originally was too wimpy too have done much good. A better one is on now. I’ve never read anything that “proved”, at least in my mind, that our front strut towers benefited from additional bracing.

Re. braces. Ireland sells reinforcement kits for motor mounts and the front strut frame. They are little over-priced tabs of steel that have to be welded on.