Sway Bar Delete on our 2-Door Base Bronco for better off-road performance

[Dusty]

We decided to remove the sway bar on our 2-door Base to see if we could get a little bit better off-road performance out of it. Here's a video we did on the subject (warning: contains plenty of our usual silliness). But if you'd rather just read about our findings, I'll key in the main points below.




So my original intent was to install a manual sway bar disconnect. I've had one on the shelf for a while, and finally thought I'd throw it on there. But then I decided to just remove the sway bar altogether, and run it for a while and see how it does. The video is a bit of a dramatization of the events, when in reality I had taken the sway bar off a couple of months prior. So I've had quite a bit of seat time in it since, including off-road trips to Calico and the Big Bear Bronco Bash, plus daily driving it to work.

The result is that it had a marked improvement off-road, and an almost negligible difference in road manners on-road. Off-road, that tiny bit of available flex went a long way in keeping the tires stuck to the ground in uneven terrain. This isn't such a big deal if you have lockers, where 3-wheeling has become a thing for these IFS Broncos. The lockers keep you moving forward even if a tire or two are in the air. But for a non-Sasquatch Bronco like our Base, lifting a tire basically stops your forward movement as the open diff simply sends power to the spinning wheel rather than the gripping one. So keeping those tires planted is a big deal on an open-diff rig like ours. The increase in flex isn't huge. In fact it probably only comes out to a couple of inches at the most. But that little bit of extra flex does wonders for keeping tires planted in mild to medium terrain, which keeps power to the ground and keeps you moving.

On road, I've found that yes, you can feel the small bit of extra body sway, but it's nothing I'm concerned about. Having driven lifted 4X4's all my life, this one is still a bit tighter on the road than most. And when I have the top off and the doors swapped out for the fiberglass halo doors, there's really no difference at all.

I will say that it becomes more noticeable the heavier you are loaded. As I type this, I'm sitting at my brother-in-law's kitchen table 1,500 miles into a 3,000 mile summer road trip. Steffie and I were loaded to the gills for the trip. Doing 85 MPH on the freeway with a side-wind and the bow wake of semi trucks we pass does get a little unnerving. So I do wish I had simply bolted the sway bar back on for this over-loaded long distance road trip. Because of that I think I'll keep the sway bar handy but run without it almost all of the time. In the future I'll simply throw it back on there only for rare situations like this trip we're on right now. Yeah, that's not as convenient as pulling a pin, but I don't think I'll need to re-install it more than once every couple of years so overall it is going to be way more convenient that pulling pins ever time I go off-road.

I will say that this works well for our particular Bronco and our use case. It won't be ideal for everyone. If you have a 4-door, or a heavy build or typical heavy load-out any time you off-road, or if you simply don't go off-road very often, deleting the sway bar probably isn't going to be feasible for you. But for us, so far we love it.

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[Dusty]

Oh, for those who will ask, it has 35" Nittos on Icon Rebound Pros. Suspension is ICON EXP's, UCA's and rear links. It's a '21 2-door Base, 2.3L with 7-speed manual.

 

[woodysfj40]

Curious if you've tried no front sway bar, and keeping the rear.

That's how my FZJ80 is now (solid axles however), and how most rockcrawler or Ultra4 comp rigs with sway bars are set up. Granted, the Bronco is a completely different animal than either of those, but it woiuld be a worthwhile comparison.

 

[Dusty]

Curious if you've tried no front sway bar, and keeping the rear.

That's how my FZJ80 is now (solid axles however), and how most rockcrawler or Ultra4 comp rigs with sway bars are set up. Granted, the Bronco is a completely different animal than either of those, but it woiuld be a worthwhile comparison.

This Bronco doesn't have a rear sway bar. But if it did, I might have experimented with removing it too

 

[NORCALGXP]

Excellent video, I to run most of the time in summer with out the Acfab links attached to the sway bar and you are right the two door tilts a little more but not to the point of being scary. I'm now use to it and can take corners at above posted speed limits on my 37s.

 

[Dusty]

Excellent video, I to run most of the time in summer with out the Acfab links attached to the sway bar and you are right the two door tilts a little more but not to the point of being scary. I'm now use to it and can take corners at above posted speed limits on my 37s.

I'm moving up to 37's fairly soon so I'll see if it makes much difference for us. Squeezing a few more miles out of these 35's on this road trip Not sure if it will make any difference at all. That extra inch of height is below the axle centerline so I'm guessing it won't affect the sway geometry much. The extra unsprung weight might help articulation slightly.

 

[Bmadda]

Sway bars are probably the most misunderstood chassis part ever invented. I grew up around dirt track racing. Latemodels that do 145MPH around a 1/2 mile dirt track DO NOT have sway bars front or rear. Modifieds do not either. When we raced street stock, we tried both ways, and definitely found handling improvement using front sway bar only...same w/sportsman/grand national stock cars. Sportsman were allowed to have the sway bar mounted to adjustable hiems so the bar could be "preloaded" (you would thread the hiem further from the frame on the R side to add effective spring rate to that corner). That was a useful adjustment to compensate for a heavier than normal track. My limited experience w/drag racing has taught me that a rear sway bar only can be a very useful tuning tool. Requires a rear sway bar w/adjustable links, and what you are supposed to do is lift the frt end so the tires are barely touching, then adjust so that the ride height of the RR frame rail is 1/8-1/16" higher than the left. The idea is to compensate for the torque of launch putting more weight on the LR. 90/10 "easy up" shocks on the front, and no front sway bar+adjusted rear bar =straight launches. Asphalt racers DO typically use sway bars, as do road racers...but of course they do have the luxury of racing on a very smooth surface (or if it isn't they sure whine about it!). I guess what I have learned is that a sway bar is more of a handling "band aid" than anything. For wheeling I want it completely gone, for "on road" in a wheeling rig? It's maybe kinda nice, but I can for sure live without it

 

[kodiakisland]

Ditched mine 10K miles ago.

 

[Strizzo]

People will say you’re endangering the lives of an entire generation by driving on the street without sway bars, but you’ll be just fine.
I ran no sways on my previous rig, a 2010 Xterra, and didn’t die. It was fine with higher rate coilovers until I put a steel bumper and winch on the front, which pushed the ride height down to where the control arms were close to flat and made the front end wallow and roll pretty badly. I added preload to the coilovers and it moved the roll center upward giving it more natural anti roll tendency.

 

[Snacktime]

I am going to have to join the sway bar less crew sooner or later.

 

[Dusty]

We just got home from a 4,200 mile road trip without the sway bar. LOTS of highway miles, side winds, head winds, twisty curves, heavy load for traveling, etc. Yes we felt slightly more body sway but we both just sort of got used to it. For the first few hundred miles into the trip I was wondering if I should have thrown the sway bar back on just for the road trip. But by a few hundred more miles I wasn't missing it at all. The biggest test was I-40 from Tucumcari to Amarillo in a thunderstorm at night with high winds, rain, shitty road surface, and semi trucks hauling ass as if it was sunny and calm. The cross winds and bow wake of the big rigs rocked us a little bit but not too bad. It will be rare that I'll be loaded that heavy and going on such long trips, but even for that rare situation it wasn't too bad. So the sway bar is staying off.

 

[fordbroncowildtrak2023]

Without the front sway bar, is the stock jack tall enough to lift the front tires off the ground?

 

[kodiakisland]

Without the front sway bar, is the stock jack tall enough to lift the front tires off the ground?

My jack still lifts my Bronco the same amount before and after.

 

[Cysquatch]

on 37s, is anyone worried about the added droop with the sway bar disconnected? I overextended my driver side CV on Kings/37s with my sway bar connected! Full droop + coilovers = bad CV angles. I need a DIFF DROP bad!

 

[kodiakisland]

on 37s, is anyone worried about the added droop with the sway bar disconnected? I overextended my driver side CV on Kings/37s with my sway bar connected! Full droop + coilovers = bad CV angles. I need a DIFF DROP bad!

I could still get full droop with the sway bar. It was full stuff that wouldn't happen.
Bad stuff can happen at full droop regardless of your setup, but I'm not worried removing the sway bar will increase my damage rates.

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