So I learned that sway-bars are not bullsh*t

[ghostjmf]

This is a car-part, all.

I took my car in for headlights, which inexplicably both went out at once; I have had the passenger's side replaced 3 times since I've have the car, the driver's side never. One of the passenger's side lights was replaced for free because it died so fast. Now both lights were out & I feared "electrical problem".

Well, I might actually have an electrical problem ( sure hope not), but right now both replacement lights work. And the reason I don't try & change them myself has to do with what you have to move away inside the car to get the lights out. On the passenger's side, it's the battery, which I'm scared to mess with. If I did this for a living I'm sure I wouldn't be, after the 1st few times, but at present I'm scared. I do replace the stupid "high mount" light in back myself. It's gone out a few times. The law in Mass is that if you have this unnecessary light as part of your car, it has to light.

So I hear that the lights went in fine, but I need a completely unrelated part, "sway bars". Front & back. Their bearings are dried out, one of the bars is already in pieces.


OK. My car people know I don't have the money for non-safety fixes, & say this is a safety fix. It's a part I've never heard of, though. The price was humongous. I just looked them up they're all humongously expensive. And a necessary part of the car's suspension. My previous cars didn't have them, though, or they surely would have gone in the life of that car. They help to keep all 4 tires on the road when you go around a corner hard. Keep the car from flipping over. My last car was too low to the ground to flip over unless you really, really tried. I tried to buy another of my last car but just couldn't find one that could pass my fix-it place's inspection.

[jaybee]

Anti-sway bars are the kind of part that you should be able to find at a junkyard (um, a recycled auto parts outlet). You may have to find the right kind of mechanic who is willing to source parts from there. The bonus is parts at a fraction of the cost.

Not all cars have them, but those that do need them to keep safe handling.

[Estonut]

Anti-sway bars are the kind of part that you should be able to find at a junkyard (um, a recycled auto parts outlet). You may have to find the right kind of mechanic who is willing to source parts from there. The bonus is parts at a fraction of the cost.

Not all cars have them, but those that do need them to keep safe handling.

True. Also, I'm not aware of any that have bearings. Bearings that are "dried out" just need to be re-greased. I'm pretty sure they said "bushings." For anti-sway bars, these would be like super-thick, tube-like rubber washers which the bars pass through, with clamps on the outside to mount them to the chassis. Bushings do dry out, crack and fall apart with age. If the mechanic can use junkyard parts, he'll probably be replacing the bushings. The good thing is that bushings are much easier and cheaper to replace than bearings.

[ghostjmf]

Estonut, I don't know how you can be "pretty sure" that my mechanic said "bushings" when my mechanic said it into my ear, not yours. Just sayin', here. I know what I heard. It may very well be that my mechanic 'should have said "bushings"', but they said "bearings".

And for the record, I've have other parts that I'm sure have bearings where both this & my previous garage said they were beyond the point of just being regreased & needed to be replaced.

jaybee:

The only time this mechanic will use junkyard parts is if the part is no longer available from any other source. And even then they & I weren't happy with junkyard parts that were part of the car's structure or had to do mechanical or electrical or whatever work. (In example, I had no problem with the rear-view mirror I picked up, but breathed a sigh of relief that the assembly that moves the windshield wipers, which has a formal name I thought I would never forget after I finally learned it, but which I have forgotten, did it's work & did not fall apart. No reason, beyond age, which was what caused my original part to fail, that it should have failed, but I was still relieved when it didn't.) We did use junkyard parts (with me going to the appropriate junkyard to pick them up) on my previous car, 'til even junkyards across the US (I would have had them ship) couldn't supply parts, like the turn-signal assembly.

Also, my lookup for my car (Acura RSX-S, bought used, believe me; I was trying to replace my Integra & this was as close as I could come in a car that passes inspection) shows that people will argue about which of the expensive sway-bar sets are "right" for the car; you can't be that picky at the junkyard, so I let my mechanic pick the right (sob; full price) one.

We (the mechanic & I) always do use good-quality after-market parts rather than Acura's super-expensive dealer parts when we can get them. We can't always get them.

[jaybee]

Granted, new parts will always be preferred to some that came from a junkyard - of course at the cost of a lot more $$$. In years past I've saved a ton of money by getting used parts from a junkyard. While it can be a crap-shoot for electrical parts, for a basic mechanical part like a sway bar, it's easy enough to inspect to verify that you have one in good condition. That kind of mechanical part is directly tied into the mileage of the wrecked car. If it has low mileage, then a part like a sway bar will be in good condition unless it was damaged in the wreck. But for peace of mind you buy new stuff from the OEM source. While I've used junkyards in the past, it's been years since I've repaired our vehicles with anything other than OEM But I don't have the time to do anything other than basic maintenance on our vehicles. If anything heavy-duty is going on it goes to the dealership for repair.

Not sure if it's worth mentioning it but the reason Estonut talked about bushings and not bearings is because bearings are not used in sway bar installations - in any car. Bearings are for rotational support, while sway bars are brace pieces that are clamped in place - except for the nominal amount of flex that comes from the use of bushings. Bushings are either a hard rubber or nylon - bearings simply will not work to hold a sway bar. I've owned a lot of Acura/Honda products over the years, still have four of them in the garage as I type this - there are no bearings holding the sway bars in place.

Now, it could be that further down the line - after the swaybars are attached to the suspension components of the car that there could be bearings used in those parts. This is especially true for the front suspension / sway bar installation. For your sake, I hope not, as that just means there is more than just a sway bar issue going on.

At the risk of causing further controversy I will ask this: How well do you trust your mechanic? I say this because you say that "One of the sway bars is already in pieces". Sway bars are solid bars, very strong, very heavy, very simple. It is common over lots of miles for the bushings holding them to wear out. It is very, very rare for a sway bar to break - other than if the vehicle is involved in a wreck. If you ran hundreds of thousands of miles on rough roads you may break a sway bar. Or, if your bushings go out and the sway bar is rattling around within the bushing housings it could cause the bar to break. But in this second case it would still take many miles - miles that would be signaling that you had a problem with some horrible banging noises. Not something that you could ignore.

Just my 2 cents worth coming from a car guy.

[ghostjmf]

jaybee:

I know that the mileage on a wrecked car will tell you the mileage on the parts; its just that I don't always trust a junkyard to not have turned back the mileage indicator for just that reason.

But in my country-wide search for a turn-signal assembly for my '87 Acura Integra, I couldn't find any, period, for my model car, with dishonest mileage on them or not. Bittersweet, as I'd been putting off buying yet another because I could get the signal to work by holding it in place, stuff like that. The car had been through several turn signals, but 2 years after I could have bought a new one as an aftermarket part, they weren't to be found even in junkyards.

As for this latest repair on the RSX-S, my mechanic did mention that I should have been hearing "tick tick tick" when I cornered, which I was not, but while this isn't horrible banging noises, they did think from the shape these things were in I should be hearing something.

At any rate, the bill is front of me here; what I paid for are:

2 sway bar link kits for the front @$67.10 each, $6.95 in shop supplies, $110.00 labor,
2 sway bar link kits for the back @60.95 for one & $60.93 for the other, $6.95 in shop supplies, $110.00 in labor.

So it is the "links" they replaced, not the bars, which are a lot more expensive that $67.10 from what I'd looked up.

Sounds like "links" = "bushings".


The roads around here are such crap I'm surprised any Boston-area drivers have any suspensions left at all. Even in broad daylight you can't avoid all the uneven pavement unless your car can levitate.

I had what was called a "stabilizer bar" break in my Integra, after being towed illegally by people doing street repair who had put no warning signs up & who weren't supposed to be towing cars away until a day later, & then after having run over some unavoidable debris on a highway. I don't know which if either was to blame, but the bar broke soon after, & cost over $1,000.00 to repair 15 years ago. So maybe the Integra did have sway-bars, & this was one of them.

[jaybee]

At any rate, the bill is front of me here; what I paid for are:

2 sway bar link kits for the front @$67.10 each, $6.95 in shop supplies, $110.00 labor,
2 sway bar link kits for the back @60.95 for one & $60.93 for the other, $6.95 in shop supplies, $110.00 in labor.

So it is the "links" they replaced, not the bars, which are a lot more expensive that $67.10 from what I'd looked up.

Sounds like "links" = "bushings".

The above sounds quite reasonable. For a $60 to $70 part(s), I wouldn't bother with junkyard stuff either. It's more that when you have a new part that will run $800 and you can buy it used for $35 that it really makes sense. But with only $110 in labor for each set, it's a very fair and reasonable charge all around.

The 'links" must be the bushings. Bushings for sway bars are set up in pairs - one bushing is secured around the sway bar and the other to a mount on the frame or suspension parts. The whole bushing looks like a small-scale barbell - two round casings to hold the bushings with a shaft linking them together.

Again - Glad you got things repaired at a fairly low price.

[smilergrogan]

I went to a sway bar once and had a pretty good time. I thought I might not like it because I'm not easily swayed.

[Estonut]

I went to a sway bar once and had a pretty good time. I thought I might not like it because I'm not easily swayed.

You should have tried an anti-sway bar...

[smilergrogan]

I went to a sway bar once and had a pretty good time. I thought I might not like it because I'm not easily swayed.

You should have tried an anti-sway bar...

There probably would be more interest in bushings at one of those. I don't recall any talk of bushings at the sway bar.

[jaybee]

And bushings always come in pairs.

[TheConfessor]

Dean Martin was largely responsible for the popularity of sway bars in the 1950s.