I am installing a rear sway tomorrow (05 MCSC) and wanted to get any advice on the differences between the cabrio and the typical S.

I know the 5th bolt can be a pain.
someone mentioned going around the gas tank being an issue.

For those of you who have done this could you please give some details of extra stuff that you had to do.. any help is greatly appreciated.

Thanks

 

Beuler... Beuler

 

Crap, there is an install guide and it talks about the cabrio.... do a search, I have it saved on my laptop... that is travelling with my wife right now.

 

i have not done one yet, but plan to soon... here are the links

https://www.northamericanmotoring.co...ad.php?t=31792
https://www.northamericanmotoring.co...ll+convertible

hope this helps

 

We got Da Boy's rear sway bar installed this weekend.

Wasn't much different then a hardtop, except for 1 additional sub-frame bolt that has to come out in order to drop the sub-frame enough to get the old bar out and the new bar in.

Since I don't have pictures of it myself as I was up under the cabrio trying to figure out how to get the heat-shield peeled away enough to get to the bolt, the best I can do is tell you that right at the point in the rear where it sweeps upwards on each side of the mufflers, you'll see a place where there are 2 little washer type nuts that have to be removed.

You then have to decide whether you want to save as much of the heat-shield or not. We opted to save it as best as we could, so we took some wire cutters and cut at an angle across this piece of heat-shield enough to peel it back and see the both. (I would recommend some tin snips to do the job). You will also need a long extension in order to get all the way up to the bolt.(I also highly recommend some type of lighting under there so you can see what you are trying to get at, as it's hidden up there rather well.

I also recommend that when you get to the point of needing to bend the heat-shielding out of the way, you should have some gloves on. The edges can be sharp, especially where the heat-shield is cut.

Other than this 5th sub-frame bolt, the removal and installation of a rear sway bar is no different than on a hardtop.

The guy that hosted the sway bar install day took some video and will be posting it somewhere. When he does I'll see if I can't post a link to it over here.

 

Also, with all the extra bracing on the cabrio, it was actually easier to get the sub-frame back up.

 

there are 2-3 pieces of heat shielding that you have to mess with. There are to bolts right under the "5th bolt" and two washer bolts towards the front that you can remove to losten the heat shielding up. the shielding from the rear to the middle of the carslides forward and you may have to bend the front pieces in a little to get the middle piece to move enough. then "golfer" cut the shielding right under the "5th bolt and it worked very well.

After all was said and done the heat shielding slid back into place pretty well. the bolts adn washer bolts put it mostly back in to shape. I took a hammer and tapped the rest of the shielding back into shape and the area that was cut, over lapped nicely and it looked pretty good under there when all was said and done.

Fishing the bar out took a little longer and was a little more difficult than other cars but it does come out. We put the new one in quickly so that the path was fresh in our minds.

Dickdavid mentioned that getting the subframe re attached was easier.... what we did is put the jack rught up where all the extra bracing comes to a V
this lifted the subfram in a way so that the bolts for the subframe line up very easily. With the non cabrio's these often did not line up so well with jacking up only one side.

Keep in mind that the group did about 6 cars that day (mine the only cabrio) and we still got mine doen in about 1:45-2hours. Figuring out what to do for the 5th bolt added about 20 minutes. We had about 4-5 pairs of hands for this as well.