Front Anti Roll Bar Disassembly

[AlfaVerde88]

Yet another qusetion from me. The car is parked in the garage and I am tackling some issues while I am not driving it. I am without my manual at the moment, but I am changing all of the front sway bar bushings. What is the best way to disassemble the assembly?

[fraz]

I need to do this too. Any tips would be groovy.

[AR4me]

I did that job on Roxanne before switching the suspension to RSR - I think there are detailed pics of how I did it in that thread.
Jes

[Slackjaw]

I just completed this job this weekend; it was not fun. The bar came off leaving what remained of the old bushings still attached to the lower control arms. One twisted off with a vise grip, the other I had to burn off down to the metal sleeve and heat that up with a torch before it would come off. I used a "poor man's press" (long bolt with a stack of washers and a couple of appropriately sized sockets) to get the other two old bushings out of the end links. It worked well to get the new ones pressed in too. Getting the end links back onto the sway bar was very hard. They took a lot of hammering with a plastic mallet and later with a block of wood and a bigger hammer. I was beginning to think I had the wrong size bushing! The other ends slid onto the control arms without too much trouble, at least. I would not recommend starting this job without a torch of some sort, vise grips, a heavy plastic mallet and copious amounts of WD40 or a similar penetrating oil.

I went with stock bushings at the ends, and poly in the center. I finally got everything on and mounted, and went for a quick drive... what a difference. Tough job but well worth it!

[Gubi]

My experience:

Sway bar removal from lower A-arms was not too bad. Soaked in PB blaster, then used a small 3-jaw puller. Both of them popped right off after some torqueing.

I used a 1-ton hand arbor press to press out the old bushings from my new bar. It was strong enough, but the tough part was getting the bar/press/pushing devices arranged so everything was lined up and I could get sufficient force on the bushings. Once I found the right combination of pipe sections and ratchet sockets to use to push out the bushings it went okay.

I used poly on the end links. They pressed in very easily to the end link, but getting the end link attached to the bar took a whole lot of hammering with a mini sledge with the bar braced against a piece of concrete. Eventually got them on, though.

Once everything was assembled it slid right on to the control arms. Going from a 22 mm stock bar with shot bushings to a 24 mm Verde bar with poly made a whole world of difference in handling.