I thought some of you might find this story interesting, and maybe there's some kind of lesson involved...

My dad was one of the first people to get his hands on the new PT Cruiser Turbos back in August of last year when the 03s hit the dealerships. The car's been fun to drive, and really quite useful when we've needed to move things that weren't just rediculously huge (refrigerators, etc). Anyway, I've been hanging around a PT forum or two for a while, and recently I saw an interesting post about some guy whose car didn't have a rear sway bar when he took delivery. I figured that was some pretty bad luck; somebody at the plant must have been taking a siesta when his car rolled by on the line. His saga went on and on about Chrysler screwing with him about covering the work and the part, blah blah blah.... At any rate, I was washing my dad's car last week and figured what the hell, I'll check, but it's probably there - they're bound to have SOME QC at the plant. Well I got under there and looked and looked and looked, and no rear sway bar. :mad: So tomorrow the really fun part starts - getting a serious suspension part replaced almost a year after purchase, with no cost to us... Moral of the story, look over your new cars and make sure that all the important bits are there. I'll let y'all know how it turns out, but I hope my RX-8 doesn't have some stupid problem like this.

BTW, before everyone goes off on how either me or my dad COULDN'T tell just by driving the car, realize that the car he drove before was a 94 Ford Econoline Conversion Van, and I just stopped driving a 12 year old Park Ave. But spending time in the 83 RX-7, made me want to check the Cruiser, and I'm glad I did.

That sucks. You're sure it didn't fall off? :p

RotaryStalker

Originally posted by Boozehound
BTW, before everyone goes off on how either me or my dad COULDN'T tell just by driving the car, realize that the car he drove before was a 94 Ford Econoline Conversion Van, and I just stopped driving a 12 year old Park Ave. But spending time in the 83 RX-7, made me want to check the Cruiser, and I'm glad I did. Unless you're pushing the PT cruiser in the handling department, it's going to be hard to tell. Remember, lack of a rear sway-bar means that the PT will push, or understeer. Most vehicles like that are setup so that they have alot of understeer when driven hard to begin with, so it's not going to be completely out of character. A minivan is going to be a sloppy handler to begin with, so unless you've driven another model with the swaybar attached, it would be difficult to tell whether the PT was pushing because it's missing a swaybar, or simply because it handles like crap.

There are also some vehicles that don't even come with both swaybars (or practically ineffective ones). I wonder if it was left off intentionally because that's how they set it up from the factory...

---jps

That sucks. You're sure it didn't fall off?

RotaryStalker

Yeah, it's pretty obvious when you look under there, there's no mounting hardware, no scratches, etc. Looks like the QC supervisor was sick that day :)


Unless you're pushing the PT cruiser in the handling department, it's going to be hard to tell. Remember, lack of a rear sway-bar means that the PT will push, or understeer. Most vehicles like that are setup so that they have alot of understeer when driven hard to begin with, so it's not going to be completely out of character. A minivan is going to be a sloppy handler to begin with, so unless you've driven another model with the swaybar attached, it would be difficult to tell whether the PT was pushing because it's missing a swaybar, or simply because it handles like crap.


I'm under the impression that sway bars are big torsional springs that are actuated when one wheel tries to go higher or lower than the other, causing the bar to twist, and the restorative force in the bar is what tries to keep the wheels on the same plane, thus greatly reducing body roll. I've done sway bar installs on other cars (only front so far), and there's a marked improvement without even pushing a car to its limit, it really seems to flatten out the corners and such. As for understeer, thats just going to happen with this car, it weighs too much for its footprint, it's FWD, and it's got an AWFUL turning radius with 17s on it. However, the car is still a lot of fun to drive, but the body roll is a bit out of line with what I'd expect.


A minivan is going to be a sloppy handler to begin with...

Was that a dig? Minivan or not, it still turns heads all the time. :p Shouldn't you at least call it a Neon knockoff? I know the 40s sedan delivery style isnt for everyone, but IMO it still looks pretty nice...

Originally posted by Boozehound
...thus greatly reducing body roll... Well, how much depends on how big the swaybar is, along with the weight of the car, and how long the "arm" is. You might not find much of a difference with the bar on, depending on how stiff it is. ...and it's got an AWFUL turning radius with 17s on it... the size of the wheels is going to affect the turning radius?

---jps

Originally posted by Sputnik
the size of the wheels is going to affect the turning radius?

---jps


In so far as the cruiser goes, it's relatively narrow car with an engine bay that takes up most of the front end with some really impressive packaging, and as such there's not much depth in the wheel well. That's the main problem, but with a larger tire/wheel, the turning of the wheel causes a greater distance traveled (displacement) at the edge of the tire, and there's no room for that with the small wheel wells. If you look at stats on the car, the GT has the worst turning radius by about 6 ft over its brethren that roll on 16s - and from what I've gathered it gets worse when people put 18s on it and so on...