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- Feb 29, 2016
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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.
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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