I know this has been brought up before. Is there a need to replace them with aftermarket if you just use car for daily driver? I do drive enthusiastically, no track/autcross stuff. Do they increase handling in any way? Just wondering if it's a waste of $$ and time.

 

If you aren't lowered and running the oem bar I would say they are a waste then unless you have a broken or bad one.

 

The big advantage to replacing them with adjustable units is that you can take the preload off the sway bar. This is for people trying to get everything from their suspension like racers. Stock ones are pretty cheap, and used stock ones are even cheaper.

 

I got a after market 22mm rear sway bar. I was wondering if the rear endlinks would help?
I notice the couple months ago when i was going to try and stiffest setting, that the stock bolts bent a little bit. so i couldn't slide it out without a hammer. so I left it alone. That is one of the reasons I was looking into the stiffer endlinks

 

Good luck finding out what that means, however... I replaced my endlinks just for yucks, and looked high and low for an answer to how one would "preload" a sway bar (other than using links of unequal lengths, which you wouldn't do unless you had a very specific need on a very specific race car). There's not one half-decent explanation out there, at least as far as the Mini is concerned. There's a long thread I put out there not too long ago trying to get to the bottom of it, but it still does't quite make it... I still haven't satisfactorily found out what kind of adjustment (within the normal range of normal or lowered, or even race-ready, Minis) might benefit the user. Lots of great jargon, though - problem is, as with most jargon, none of it has any real meaning!

I couldn't really say whether my new endlinks changed my handling or not. They certainly didn't make it worse. And they look really nice, for the rare occasion when I've got my head stuck in place of a wheel. The ones I bought are way overbuilt, so I won't have any need ever to replace them. If you're interested in my OEM units, which are in pretty good shape, PM me!

 

Thanks for the input applesauce. Where is that thread you said you started? I think I still going to buy them just to make the rear a lil stronger.

 

Now I'm not so sure... Now I'm thinking it wasn't me who started it. I remember some very long-winded explanations that summed to nothing at all. Everyone just kept tossing around this idea of "preload" as if the sway bar were a spring...which it is, but seemingly no one can clarify for me how one would go about preloading it when it's in a static position (which is the only way you can preload a spring, obviously - at every other point in its action it's just under normal load).

So I'll pose the question again, to whomever feels like tackling it: how do you preload a sway bar, at least in the case of a Mini? Make the end links shorter? Longer? How could this work, except by changing the length of the sway bar's lever arm? Assuming an ideal, perfect end link with negligible flex, it shouldn't matter if it's a millimetre or a mile long: for every action an equal and opposite...etc. Move one, and it functions as a parallelogram, and moves the other. The rest is up to the sway bar, which variously twists along its long axis, or bends along the short; all the end link does is actuate the sway bar, but how it does this should not depend on its length (again assuming no flex in the link itself, and no change to the effective lever of the sway bar).

As you've contributed to this thread already, I assume you're going to buy Duane's? Those are the only ones I have any experience with, and are definitely the pieces I would recommend. Mine are still silent after a few weeks of lots of salt for not much snow - you're doing great, Calgary! - but I am going to pull them in the near future and slather them in heavy (probably moly) grease and install some boots.

 

Ah-HAH! Big thanks to this fella:


The most important part, I think, is in bold. The idea that a sway bar needed to be "parallel to the road" confused the heck out of me...and made no sense whatsoever, to boot. Thanks, Smoke!

 

Well, if the bar ends are at 90 degrees (the best orientation, as Smoke said), that also means that they'll be "parallel to the road", so both descriptions are really saying the same thing. But like he said, it's not the best position *because* the ends are parallel to the road - it's the best orientation because it optimizes the torque applied by the bar end to the rest of the suspension.

 

Having adjustable endlinks are a necessity if you have coilovers and want to properly corner-balance.

Yes, you can corner balance without them, but it requires compensating for the preload of the bar by having uneven spring preload/height differences from side to side. Buy the endlinks, have you car corner balanced with all four links disconnected, then connect them up and have them lengthened or shortened such that there is no preload on the the links (the centre can be turned freely by hand) when you have the desired weight in the car, and then tighten everything up

 

OK lets see how simple I can explain preload on the sway bar. When you go into a turn or hit a bump the sway bar twists and transfers the motion from one corner to the other. Same thing happens when just one person gets into the car, or two different weight people get in. The sway bar will twist trying to even out the suspension. This will cause the car to actually turn one way better than the other because the sway bar is twisting at a stand still, or better known as preloaded.
So to eliminate preload you install adjustable end links so that with the car sitting with the driver weight or weighted however your going to drive it with one end link longer than the other so the bar is not doing any twisting or transfer from side to side. It is impossible to ever properly corner weight a car without adjustable endlinks just for this reason.
Honestly you really need to be in tune with the car to notice the difference. But you can
If you ever want to see preload put your MINI on a set of scales and write down the weight on each corner, then disconnect the sway bars and weight it again. You'll notice the weight on each corner change, and be a bigger difference from corner to corner.

 

Gently put, Way.