Two quick questions.

1. Is there anything special I should know about the lube for the sway bar, or can I just use general purpose grease ?

2. I've had to crawl under and tighten my rear sway bar twice in the last 12 months of driving (only 12K miles total). Is this typical ?

BB

 

1) I use white lithium grease. Make sure there's ample grease
on the bushings inside, outside, and bottom.

2) I've yet to have to re-tighten anything on my Alta 22mm..
ive had it for over 15k miles.

 

I've had sway bars on my other car for over 2 years and the lithium grease is still holding up fine with no squeaking.

As far as tightening them, I had to tighten mine 3-4 times in the first couple of months before I ended up using locktite on them to keep the nuts from backing off. Of course, this is a totally different car with different sway bars.

 

Blue Brummie & D_Nyholm:
How did you discover that you had to tighten them? Did you make a point of checking them or did they start rattling?

 

Correct, they starting making some knocking noises when you went over bumps. It was pretty annoying!!

 

Yeah, it's definitely quite annoying. It starts off as a barely perceptible secondary bump after hitting a road imperfection (of which we have plenty in the Boston area) and steadily gets worse.

Oh well.

Hey Kenchan and D-, thanks for the tip on the lithium grease.

BB-

 

How do you guys like the alta sway bar? What size did you go with 22mm or 19mm? This is something I am going to change out in the spring and would like your input on the alta sway bar. I assume you used blue lock tight?


Garrett

 

Well, I haven't had the chance to Auto-X since installing the bar, but I can tell you that in everyday driving, it's a hoot. I've got the 22mm and set on the middle setting.

I can say unequivocally that I am no expert, and I really don't have enough seat time in Auto-X to have "feel". But, I can tell you that I can definitely feel the impact of the stiffer rear sway bar. It definitely neutralized the behavior.

Definitely a worthwhile investment.

My $0.02 cents on installation. Be careful with the bolts on the rear sub-frame that hold the bar in place. If you don't get a clean thread alignment during the re-installation, you can damage the bolts. The threads are soft and strip out easily. I had to run around to 2 Home Depots to get new bolt and to find the right tap (just to be sure to have a clean thread on the sub-frame).

The Alta in general is the best IMHO, because of the performance, weight, and built in grease fitting to keep it running smooth.

BB

 

hey, how's that intake?

The 22mm on stiff setting is perfect with the H-Sport springs for street.

 

The intake is great! I could not be more happy with it! Besides that was the first mod I had for the car even before I actually owned it. Thanks for the deal again! As for the sway bar this is something I will add in the spring as the weather over here is getting colder. I hate working on a car in the cold. Thanks for the info guys. Now back to our scheduled programming!

Garrett

 

cool!

yeh, if you're not in a rush no need to change it until it gets warmer.