Well, its been a while since ive been out to vist the forum. Life comes at you pretty fast now a days! I wanted to take a few moments and share an expereance I had with my H-Sport 25 mm rear sway bar I installed on my R50 2 years ago.

I bought this unit and put it on my beautiful Chili Red R50 and the difference was nothing short of incredible! What a huge difference. Two years of driving this R50 in a fairly spirited fashion has ragged her out pretty good, so I freshened up the rubber parts, and put her up for sale. I decided to invest in an 06 JCW with very low miles and decided to take the H-Sport bar off the R50 and put her on the JCW. When I got the bar off, I was kind of shocked to see that the area that the bushings come into contact with were pretty badly galled up. This is not a great pic, but basically, this bar looks like a crankpin after spinning a rod bearing. The metal is actually very badly deformed under the bushing. This was a huge disappointment to say the least! I grease this bar at least twice a year. This is not a fast car and it has never been driven competitively. I gave the manufacturer a call, and pretty much got the big fat kiss off. My question to you folks is, anyone have a recommendation on a unit that can actually stand up to spirited driving, year around without galling up like this? Kinda wondering what I may have done wrong here.

 

Suspension parts rust... and where bushings are and paint meet...some sand, grit...lack of lube...rust is going to happen. Clean it a bit..hit it with some paint..get new bushings....lube it, and install.
Not sure what you expected with a metal part, under a car, rubbing on something....

 

I dont know Zippy. A heardined steel part? I guess I expected it would wear, rust, get squeekie over time. This is the first sway bar I have ever seen that the metal itself started to break down and gall to the point where it was .010/.015 smaller than the rest of the bar. Being that it is braking down under a urethane bushing (and the bushing is perfectly fine) tells me that this bar is not hard steel at all! I have bought and installed a lot of sway bars over the years, but this is the very first time I saw one so soft that the metal broke down under a urethane bushing after only 2 years of non competitive driving. I could see this happening if that bushing were never greased, or the bushing had been pounded out of the strap, and it were metal to metal, or even if this thing were used regularly in a very extreme environment, but this was not the case here. The bushing is 100% in tact and this thing had Silicone lubricant in it and its a daily driver.

 

I hear ya....but if you had not moved it... you never would have seen it...in my experience suspension parts rust and look nasty pretty fast...
Know for a long time folks complained about alta ones peeling within days.., etc...
I had a German made bar...was shot peened coated...not sure if it was powder coated or not, but seemed to be a bit higher quality than a few with shiny paint jobs that are just bent metal with spray paint...
Was made by H&R...the bushing was teflon coated, so no lube was needed
Bought it from Turner Motorsports ...know more for BMW stuff...not sure if H&R sells one big enough for you.... don't think Turner's selling MINI stuff...but if you can find H&R bars...kinda hard to find, they fit well, and are typical of what you expect from a German aftermarket company'... quality . Was only about $10 more than most others, but happened to be local for me, so no shipping at the time.

 

Think the salt and bad weather beats them up, seen ones from down south and they just had rub marks on them from the pivot.

 

Do you have a pic that's in focus so we can see what happened to the metal?

 

Hi RB- sorry the picture sucked so bad, my phone is kind of a relic. I have the bar at work (I am an automotive Tech Instructor) showing it to students. I will have to try to get it back when I go back to work and get some better pictures. Personally, I have never seen anything quite like this and I have installed a lot of anti-sway bars on a lot of cars. I know urethane bushings are very hard, but I have never seen them gall steel like this. I was actually going to have my guys put this on our hardness tester just for kicks and "peen" it to see just how hard this bar is. ECStuning: It has become so worn after just 2 years of use that my concern that it is going to break in the wear grooves at some point if we put it back into service. I would have to believe that anything that interrupts the surface integrity of such a part this badly, that is going to be twisted is going to greatly weaken it and cause a major stress riser causing it to fail. This was a tough pill to swallow, but what made it worse was that we got it from a place that didn't provide me with a warranty card, so when we tried to get some consideration for warranty, we were rebuffed. My bad for not making a better effort to get the warranty card, but who sends those things in? It is going to become a teachable lesson for a bunch of college automotive tech and metallurgy students so I guess it wont be a total loss. Dont get me wrong guys.....I'm not trying to slam the product, Im just a bit befuddled as to why this thing did this so I can avoid such a thing from happening. Michigan winters are pretty brutal and I do drive this thing on salt covered roads, but as I said, we are pretty diligent about using silicone grease and greasing this thing fairly regularly. I cant say for sure, but this bars surface hardness seems a little soft to me. I will know more when we Rockwell test her. In the mean time, we are back to the old OEM bar and man, what a huge difference! Its like driving an aircraft carrier by comparison!

 

No prob, I was just curious as I bought a used one which is waiting to be installed. I tried to check mine out last night but I'm not sure where I put it now...

 

I've had my H&R bar for 8 years. Still looks great, even after replacing the bushings twice.

 

I thought those bars with the poly bushings weren't meant to be greased.

 

If you're referring to the HSport bars, the brackets have fittings and the bushings have holes to be greased.

 

+1
H&R bars are shot peened to increase the surface hardness before getting coated....and the bushings are great...no creaks, no mess.