Most cars these days are fitted with Anti-roll bars
Americans call them sway bars and some refer to them as stabiliser bars.
As described in the Wikipedia article linked to above, they basically reduce body lean, linking the two sides of the car's suspension together. But today we are looking at maintenance.
Your average ARB is secured to the body, crossmember, subframe or chassis of the vehicle - usually by 2 clamps, each of which contain a rubber bush, which the ARB goes through.
The ends of the ARB either link directly to the wishbone/lower arm of the suspension, or (more commonly) they go via a drop link (anti roll bar link/link rod/etc)
These drop links connect the end of the ARB with the suspension arm or damper body. They are rubber bushed too, and these bushes deteriorate, often quite quickly.
This deterioration results in clunking and knocking noises, and excessive play in the suspension. It's an MOT failure and it can also make a car drive like a bag of sick.
They aren't expensive for most cars (sorry MR2 owners, not talking to you here!) - for example the QH ones I fitted today were £15 for the pair. They don't take long to change either, so check yours, and if they are worn out (cracked and deteriorated rubber bushes) replace them.
Here's how.
I'm going to take a risk here and assume everyone knows how to jack a car up securely, remove the wheel, and support the vehicle on axle stands. If you don't, then changing drop links is too much for you so go to a garage
When you have the wheel off you should see something that looks a bit like this:
The Manta is slightly unconventional in this respect as it has double-wishbone front suspension. Most cars will have McPherson strut suspension which I have also pictured to show the difference:
This actually shows the rear setup on an MR2 but it displayed what I needed to show quite well. You can see the drop link here. This type is easier to replace than the Manta type because there is normally no sleeve on the drop link and if the bolts are rusted on you can easily cut the old link off with a grinder.
Here is a closer look at the drop link itself:
You can see it is simply a metal bar - one end joins to the ARB, the other joins to a suspension componenent. Where it joins there are rubber bushes - these are the parts that usually wear out.
I started by linking 2 spanners together to free off the top nut. This is a technique a mechanic showed me years ago when you need to put extra leverage on a spanner. It works brilliantly.
Try not to use ratchets or ratchet spanners to crack off extremely tight nuts - it puts a lot of strain on the ratchet mechanism.
Once the top nut is cracked off, I switched to a ratchet spanner (no room for anything else here) The drop link on the Manta is one long bolt in essence, so I put a spanner on the other end to hold it still whilst winding off the top nut, as shown.
Be careful here. The ARB is trying to spring free at this point so you may find when the top nut comes undone it pings off the end of the drop link. It might be wise to keep fingers out of the way, or even tie the ARB to something with a ratchet strap.
In my case, the end of the link simply sheared.:
This often happens. Sometimes the nut will round instead - in which case just cut the end off with a small angle grinder.
So this leaves us with one end of the old drop link free, but the other end is still attached to the lower arm. On most cars there will just be another nut to undo (or grind off!) but the Manta has an interesting sleeve design:
The new link is on the left - the gold coloured part is a seperate sleeve that slides over the rod of the drop link, holding the bottom bush in place. It's supposed to slide back off again to allow you to remove it, but years of corrosion had fused the 2 parts together.
So I had no option but to get out theangle grinder, and cut the head off the other end, below the wishbone. This allowed the rest of the link to come free:
To put it all back together, firstly I slid the metal washer and first bush (there are 4 on these) onto the link and pushed it up through the hole in the wishbone. Then dropped the next rubber bush and washer to "sandwich" the wishbone. Then drop the gold sleeve over which stops the inner bushes moving around. If you have a more conventional drop link, you will just need to bolt it onto the arm/strut which is much less laborious.
You'll notice I've greased everything up. Drop links are notorious for snapping when you try to undo them (on all cars) and often you'll need to undo one to do some other job. Buying new ones every time gets tedious very quickly! So grease them up when you put them back together and it will help to keep them from snapping next time it all has to come apart.
Then comes the only tricky part of the job. The ARB will not want to reunite with the drop link so you'll have to find some way of levering it to meet up with the end of the drop link. I used a crowbar to lever it downwards, and pushed the drop link up, and quickly fitted the top bush and nut to hold it in place:
Once the nut is on a couple of turns, remove whatever you were using to lever the ARB and simply do up the nut. Some people use a torque wrench, I prefer to just use the "tight" setting with my arms.
Job done! Your car should now clunk less and turn-in will be improved, making the car feel a lot sharper.
Hope this is of use to some people who want to have a go at little jobs put are worried about cocking it up.
Americans call them sway bars and some refer to them as stabiliser bars.
As described in the Wikipedia article linked to above, they basically reduce body lean, linking the two sides of the car's suspension together. But today we are looking at maintenance.
Your average ARB is secured to the body, crossmember, subframe or chassis of the vehicle - usually by 2 clamps, each of which contain a rubber bush, which the ARB goes through.
The ends of the ARB either link directly to the wishbone/lower arm of the suspension, or (more commonly) they go via a drop link (anti roll bar link/link rod/etc)
These drop links connect the end of the ARB with the suspension arm or damper body. They are rubber bushed too, and these bushes deteriorate, often quite quickly.
This deterioration results in clunking and knocking noises, and excessive play in the suspension. It's an MOT failure and it can also make a car drive like a bag of sick.
They aren't expensive for most cars (sorry MR2 owners, not talking to you here!) - for example the QH ones I fitted today were £15 for the pair. They don't take long to change either, so check yours, and if they are worn out (cracked and deteriorated rubber bushes) replace them.
Here's how.
I'm going to take a risk here and assume everyone knows how to jack a car up securely, remove the wheel, and support the vehicle on axle stands. If you don't, then changing drop links is too much for you so go to a garage
When you have the wheel off you should see something that looks a bit like this:
The Manta is slightly unconventional in this respect as it has double-wishbone front suspension. Most cars will have McPherson strut suspension which I have also pictured to show the difference:
This actually shows the rear setup on an MR2 but it displayed what I needed to show quite well. You can see the drop link here. This type is easier to replace than the Manta type because there is normally no sleeve on the drop link and if the bolts are rusted on you can easily cut the old link off with a grinder.
Here is a closer look at the drop link itself:
You can see it is simply a metal bar - one end joins to the ARB, the other joins to a suspension componenent. Where it joins there are rubber bushes - these are the parts that usually wear out.
I started by linking 2 spanners together to free off the top nut. This is a technique a mechanic showed me years ago when you need to put extra leverage on a spanner. It works brilliantly.
Try not to use ratchets or ratchet spanners to crack off extremely tight nuts - it puts a lot of strain on the ratchet mechanism.
Once the top nut is cracked off, I switched to a ratchet spanner (no room for anything else here) The drop link on the Manta is one long bolt in essence, so I put a spanner on the other end to hold it still whilst winding off the top nut, as shown.
Be careful here. The ARB is trying to spring free at this point so you may find when the top nut comes undone it pings off the end of the drop link. It might be wise to keep fingers out of the way, or even tie the ARB to something with a ratchet strap.
In my case, the end of the link simply sheared.:
This often happens. Sometimes the nut will round instead - in which case just cut the end off with a small angle grinder.
So this leaves us with one end of the old drop link free, but the other end is still attached to the lower arm. On most cars there will just be another nut to undo (or grind off!) but the Manta has an interesting sleeve design:
The new link is on the left - the gold coloured part is a seperate sleeve that slides over the rod of the drop link, holding the bottom bush in place. It's supposed to slide back off again to allow you to remove it, but years of corrosion had fused the 2 parts together.
So I had no option but to get out theangle grinder, and cut the head off the other end, below the wishbone. This allowed the rest of the link to come free:
To put it all back together, firstly I slid the metal washer and first bush (there are 4 on these) onto the link and pushed it up through the hole in the wishbone. Then dropped the next rubber bush and washer to "sandwich" the wishbone. Then drop the gold sleeve over which stops the inner bushes moving around. If you have a more conventional drop link, you will just need to bolt it onto the arm/strut which is much less laborious.
You'll notice I've greased everything up. Drop links are notorious for snapping when you try to undo them (on all cars) and often you'll need to undo one to do some other job. Buying new ones every time gets tedious very quickly! So grease them up when you put them back together and it will help to keep them from snapping next time it all has to come apart.
Then comes the only tricky part of the job. The ARB will not want to reunite with the drop link so you'll have to find some way of levering it to meet up with the end of the drop link. I used a crowbar to lever it downwards, and pushed the drop link up, and quickly fitted the top bush and nut to hold it in place:
Once the nut is on a couple of turns, remove whatever you were using to lever the ARB and simply do up the nut. Some people use a torque wrench, I prefer to just use the "tight" setting with my arms.
Job done! Your car should now clunk less and turn-in will be improved, making the car feel a lot sharper.
Hope this is of use to some people who want to have a go at little jobs put are worried about cocking it up.
