Anyone broken a rear swaybar endlink before?
 

I was putting my snows on this weekend and noticed my rear swaybar endlink had separated where the "4 pegs go into the cup." I'm pretty sure I would have noticed this one of the other times I had the wheels off or when I did the brakes.

I guess that would help explain why the car was suddenly so pushy at the last event...

A search only popped up one other instance, and that was someone with aftermarket bars. Any stock autocrossers run into this?

My left rear endlink got into a bind(twisted) when I had my Hotchkis bar on. IMO these should be beefier, ever seen a corvette endlink? I just ordered a new set all around, just in case. approx $100 www.reliableperformancecenter.com

I have not had this occur on my car which I've run in B-stock for two seasons (1 co-driver the 1st year, 2 co-drivers the 2nd year).

Question, what mods/upgrades do you currently have on your car?

No mods. The car had 19" wheels when I bought it, but those are off.

Thanks for the reliable performance link, the dealer quoted me $55 for one replacement part. Yikes.

I feel fairly confident the suspension wasn't messed with.

I think the car has never been put up with a jack before and me doing that put just enough stress on a freak weak part to break it.

Thanks for the input, guys.

If your endlinks and sways are completely stock then we can assume there was no installation problem, of course. There was a TSB about this (sorry I dont have the link): they have been known to break, and if your car is under warranty it should be fixed.

My bar was installed right side up, but had some preload in it.(installation error)
It didn't break it just twisted it, uninstalled it and it straightened out.

Great place for cheap OE parts, cool guys also.

Endlink advice. This is offered because few people know how to use endlinks properly and a person's first experience with them is usually to DEAL WITH A PROBLEM the've encountered.

Foreward:

If you do your own alignment and know what you're doing then you probably already know the following info.

If you just started to play with ride height, different wheels, different swaybars, coilovers, new end links or shocks YOU MAY HAVE THIS ISSUE. Consider this a premptive word of advice to peek under you car and or re-address your end links.

OK....Here we go.

ANY TIME (AND I'M USING BOLD CHARACTERS FOR STRONG EMPHASIS) you setup your car (change ride height, springs, camber, toe, etc) YOU MUST FIRST DISCONNECT ONE ENDLINK ON THE FRONT AND ONE ON THE REAR

This is why its a great idea to have setup check list to follow. If you forget to do this your efforts have been wasted and you'll have to do it all over again. Just as you should set your tire pressures to what they would be when they are HOT on track prior to setup, you need to dissconnect your end links. Write that down somewhere. Right now.

A quick swaybar course:

Swaybars are designed to increase and decrease roll resistance or stiffness. Typically they are used to add or subtract understeer to the front and add or subtract oversteer in the rear. The beauty of the swaybars is that you can adjust them at the track easily. In otherwords, you can tune your car's suspension at the track with something other than tire pressures (which ideally are at a desired target value and confirmed with a tire pyrometer---another long post at some point).

With swaybars it is possible to address an issue you have at the front of the car. Let's take understeer as an example. Understeer is typically experienced and felt on a road course when adding power to the car and the car doesn't want to point in the desired direction you want it to go. Normal symptoms of u-steer are excessive steering input (driver really turns the wheel to get the car pointed in the right direction) and the long tire screechy sound as you go around a corner with the car headed off track. Cars that experience a lot of understeer mid corner and corner exit are slow off the corners. This is because you have to wait to go to full power. Going to full power as early as you can is the key to getting a great run down the straight. This is speed. Speed reduces lap times. Understeering cars inhibit/prohibit a faster exit speed from being acheived. BTW, the correct way to determine if you have understeer is to enter a corner and roll through the corner as quickly as you can with near zero or as little throttle as possible. If your car understeers in these conditions then you probably have a setup that is understeering. Small amounts of understeed can be dialed in or out with a swaybar. Use it. Try it. Swaybars are your friends. Experiment with them and learn something. Or....you can be afraid like most people and never, ever, ever touch them. I'll suggest to everyone that those people who try things are the drivers that learn. Drivers that learn go faster, are safer and can do more with the same car than other drivers. Trust me when I tell you that you can't mess something up that another person can't fix. Come to the track with a plan and execute it. Test days are great for this.

OK. So we've determined that corner XYZ on some track is giving us Understeer. A few things we can do. (a) Drive the corner differently. Wait, wait, wait and then go to full power. If your ability to hit a very late apex is not your strength, chances are your driving style has a TENDANCY to go to full power early. Congrats! You are normal. Most all beginner and intermediate drivers experience this. Consider this an opportunity to improve your driving skill set. (b) you are waiting and waiting and waiting to go to full power, you have slowed your car down to a crawl and when you go to power or full power the car understeers or "pushes" off the track. Symptoms of this are the feeling of running out of room to stay on the track and having to lift off the power to allow the car to point in preferred direction and stay on track. You can do a couple of things to reduce your understeer:

1. Address the front end to reduce Understeer. To reduce understeer at the front end you'll want to soften the front bar. This is done by moving the endlinks (both of them) toward the end of the bar---away from where it mounts. Technically this gives the bar more leverage to twist (kind of like when you use a long handle on a wrench to remove a rusty stubbon nut off of something). This gives the car more front roll. This increases front grip in an understeering situation.

2. Address the rear end to reduct Understeer You can also address this front understeer by (ready for this) addressing the REAR of the car. What? Huh? Yes. You want to DECREASE rear grip (therefore you get more front grip). To do this you stiffen the rear bar. Essentially what your doing is taking rear grip out of the car so the rear end wants to come around a little more in a turn which helps point the car in your desired direction. You get can the same result when you decrease your rear spring rate---the back end of the car will roll over just a tiny bit more, put less weight on the inside tire and slightly overburden the outside tire which will make the rear end of the car want to pivot a little more around the front.

Word of Caution: It takes a very skilled driver to setup a car. You drive a car right up on the edge without excessive throttle or brake inputs and listen to what the car is telling you. This I've found is what distinguishes a very good driver from an average driver. Some drivers can just drive anything they jump into. They are naturally fast. They adapt their style to the car and adjust accordingly. Sometimes they can't tell you what are car is doing. They just say "I dunno, I just drive it as fast as I can". These guys are truly talented. Truely. Other drivers can do the same thing but tell you what the car is doing and where it's doing it. These are very, very, very good drivers. You'll need data acquistion to help discover some of these issues. Perhaps the understeer only occurs in high speed sweepers? Perhaps only in right hand slow corners. Fine tuning suspension is truly a talent. Many racers I know are fast and have little idea on how to articulate what the car is doing. They just drive. Therefore, it is difficult to fine tune your suspension. You can use these same principles to take some large chunks of handling problems out of your cars. Some of you may be able to get to the finer tuning side of things. Go for it. Try it. Don't be afraid to fail.

So what does all of this have to do with endlinks???

Well, endlinks are the connections to your swaybars. If you lower or raise ride height, put on a different spring, change bars, camber, toe you are changing the tension on these endlinks. When you change this tension you are influencing your suspension's mechanics. When you hear the term "preload" this is a PRE-LOADED swaybar. Think about it as backswing in golf thats all loaded up and ready to attack the golf ball. This tension is not at rest when the car is at rest. Not good. So you make a change to your car during setup and forget to dissconnect the bars and you've added preload which may add to more under or oversteer. It can even make the car handle ultra funky by exposing these under/over symptoms in right or left turns only. When this happens most beginner and intermediate driver types start pointing and blaming their shocks, springs, tire or something else that has nothing to do with the actual issue. WHICH IS WHY it is so important to know what your endlinks are doing.

What to do each and everytime you make an adjustment or install new bars, springs, change ride height etc.

1. Dissconnect one of your front and one of your rear endlinks.
2. Make whatever adjustments you want to make. Perhaps lower ride height. Perhaps add more camber. Perhaps you're putting on an entirely new shock and spring package.
3. Reinstall the endlinks WHEN THE CAR IS ON ALL FOURS AND ON A LEVEL SURFACE. Reinstalling the endlinks when the car is jacked up on its side is the same as adding preload. The correct way to do this is to have the cars TIRES on four stands or on a lift where you can get under it. Again, the suspension has to be under it's normal static load with all tires sitting nicely on the ground. Ideally there is someone sitting in the driver's seat to replicate the exact weight that is in the car during your driving event. We like to perform all our setups with a 1/2 tank of fuel and use watersoftener bags of salt in the drivers seat for driver weight.
4. After the links are installed you should be able to hold on to these links and twist them a bit. They should freely move. You should be able to jiggle or rattle them. This would indicate no preload.

Symptoms of preload:

1. No way in hell you can remove your endlinks.
2. Suspension is so bound up that you have to jack up the car, lower the car, discconect the bar because you can't get the endlink bolt out of either the sway bar side or the control arm.
3. When you remove the bar the car makes a serious motion that scares the crap out of you and you think about all the times your mom said "you'll poke an eye out". That would be MAJOR preload. This also means that your car was whacked big time. F'd up yo schizzle dizzle.

So.......Do some winter maintenance. Take your end links off and make sure the threads are free and the nuts can move and can be easily shortened or lengthened. Make sure the little spherial round shiney ball bearing looking thing with the hole in it can more freely. If it doesn't, try some grease. If it still doesn't move throw it away and get another one.

Something else you may want to try with a friend is this: Increase or decrease your ride height and see if your links have enough length and/or can be shortened. Easy to do with adjustable collar coilover suspenion. All you need to do is make a dramatic height adjustment with the shock collars. Take 5 or 6 turns (all up or all down) all the way around. Your goal is to really lower the car and then to really raise the car. Make sure the end links are first dissconnected. Also make sure that when you turn your height adjustment collars you are actually lowering or raising the car.

Now reconnect the bars. Notice how the links need adjustment now? Make the adjustment. Once again, these need to freely move or have the ability to jiggle when connected. All 4 of them.

Now go the other way (car is low or car is high). Do you have enough endlink adjustment to do this? If not then you should think about getting some end links that have more adjustment.

Several links that I've seen on the market will not SHORTEN enough. If you have these and are running a ride height where you have to jack the car to install them then you've got problems. We make our own now. You'll want to figure out if those neat little buggers that people buy because they're cheap and they think they do something magical ACTUALLY FIT AND WORK!

Hopefully this has helped some of you understand the proper use of endlinks.

Happy Rotoring.

BTW, We are headed to the NASA Road Atlanta December event. I have 3 RX8's in the shop and none of them have a motor installed. Building new cars for 2010 and beyond. Jason Andrew and I will be driving with Tom Neel. Tom owns the www.partsgroup.com and has a silver RX8. If you're in the area---stop on by.

Meyer out

Pics of of our 2 rotor 13b NA RX-8 w/Approx 300 flywheel hp here: www.meyer-motorsports.com Should be a killer zoom zoomer.

Good post Eric.....Most of the endlinks out there are way too long on a lowered car. The stock ones are marginal with any more than about 1/2" drop and are non-adjustable anyway

A couple of the aftermarket ones I have seen are way too long the way they come

Custom ones are easy to make...just need to buy good Heim fittings and the correct length centers...and you should be good to go

You guys should make some and sell them ;) There really is a market for decent ones

Folks...I think the big message here is they need to be adjustable to prevent binding...and they should be passive when you put them in...if not they are not acting as a sway bar...but as a stiffer spring...that moves around erratically with car dynamics....and that isn't something you want to try and tune :)

Huh? Soften to decrease grip?

Whoops. Fellow Forum Spell/content checkers to the rescue. Ajustments made. Thank you sincerely.

FWIW, we don't use a rear bar. We use a really, really, really stiff front bar and tune the car with rear spring changes. The rear springs on our Koni shocks are actually faster to access and change then the front or rear bars.

http://gallery.me.com/meyermotorspor...&bgcolor=black

Remove bolt that holds the rear shock on.
Slide the black lower spring perch collar off.
Springs slips down and right over the lower shock assembly
Add new spring
Add perch
Reinstall bolt
Go rip.

Our setup USE to be:

Speedsource front bar, MSpeed rear bar 750 front, 600 rear
Speedsource front bar stiff, no rear bar, 600F, 500r
Bigger Speedway front bar, no rear, 550F, 450 r
Bigger Speedway #2, 500F, 400R
We have a bigger one yet again but have not tested.

Pictures of quick release links for rain (and adjustment) on the way

How much did you car weigh Eric, and what was the front/rear balance % when using no rear bar?

If you seach you will fin people that have bent front and back oem endlinks. Dont know if they put out tsb yet but if your sticking with stock you might want to check on your front and rear endlinks every time you hit a bump pot hole or pack your 8 with 4 people. GL

Hey, some of us like his Indomitable Walls of Text :lol:. I don't particularly know what I'm doing when it comes to setting up my suspension let alone finding ways to tweak it that won't get masked by my own improving driving skills (I'm a little over a second off the pace, sometimes as much as 2 seconds depending on how the course is setup but that's behind National level drivers in their setup cars... so I don't feel too bad, but have to compete with them locally anyway...) so the more brain dumps I get from him the more information I have to attempt to use to explain what I feel when driving. I still end up on google once or twice for every post he makes, but I don't think he's written one of those monster posts yet that hasn't been useful.


Actually reminds me a lot of a GT2 racer at work whose on the driving enthusiasts email lists. His responses are almost universally useful so I actually have an email rule to copy them off for further inspection :D:

Thanks for the writeup Eric. Awesome detail and learned a bunch.

Yes, thanks. Installed the replacement today and made sure not to tighten until the car was back on the ground.

Bummer I don't get to test it out until next season...

I was looking over my factory endlinks this weekend with all four wheels on the ground (my car has koni sports which produce a ~1/2" drop on these cars). The fronts look fine, the rears look "iffy" at best. Looks like I'll need adjustable endlinks on the rear of the car before the front.

[quote=EricMeyer;3325500]FWIW, we don't use a rear bar. We use a really, really, really stiff front bar... quote]

101: Really Stiff Front Bar - ok help me out. This is the second car I am starting to learn suspension changes on for HPDE. The first car also was reported to need a big front bar (E36 M3). Before I did that I got the car nice and neutral thru camber changes (significantly more front than rear). Then I put on the big front bar - understeer. I wrote it off to me not lowering the car much meaning I thought I had better geometry by not lowering it much.

Now I am on to my second toy, a 2004 RX-8. This car is stiffer than my M3 and more neutral out of the box. I was thinking all I need is some good tires and i will be ready to go. Then i read I need a big front sway bar.

The school bell rings.....

I think Eric's really stiff front bar (with no rear bar) is entirely because it is faster to get the balance needed at a give track with that set of track conditions by rear spring and shock changes. So they can get it anywhere from loose to really tight with spring and shock choices on the rear, but can leave the front alone when they are actually at the track.

I don't know that I would take that exact same methodology for personal use, even at the track, unless I ended up with enough money for tons of different bars, spring sets, and shock sets to play with each variant on a single track weekend, and then time would still have to be the only critical factor in choice. Not being in a professional and competitive series changes the game quite a bit.

Picture a spring that only works when a car leans, and you have a swaybar.

In a straight line, they don't do much. Single wheel bumps work the swaybar slightly, but overall the main springs take care of almost everything in this case.

Under high lean conditions (a sweeper for example) one side of the suspension is being pushed up, while the other is in droop. That loads the swaybar to resist the roll. Essentially the spring rate for that outer corner goes up.

That's why you got push on the BMW - adding a front bar raised the front spring rate under side load conditions. If you didn't do anything to balance the rear, the net result is the push you described.

I'm pretty sure the E36 has a very limited amount of front camber, and is a pretty tippy car. Reducing the body lean with the front bar probably would net a lot bigger available contact patch (and much less worn outer front tire edges) with the correct tuning.

In my experience with other chassis, sways make the biggest difference in transition moves. Cars tend to take a set much quicker. I'm not sure what the negative effect of too much bar would be, does anyone know?

Yay, double post.

Eric. Do you have an e-book somewhere I can just read front to end, with indexes, a table of contents and some sort of search function? that would be awesome :)

Once again he is right on the money---Miata links are plentiful and inexpensive.

Interesting question. Not sure if I understand it correctly.

Our first two cars ran about 2,660 no fuel, no driver. Rear weight % runs about 48.5 - 48.7

The absence of a rear bar or the size of bars does not effect the rear weight % of the car to my understanding.

Again, when you set up a car you'll want to dissconnect the links thus removing any influence the bar brings to the car and any influence you'd see on the scales. Some people call the dissconnecting of the links "neutralizing the sway bars"----at least they do round these parts.

Thanks. I wasn't meaning that 'no rear bar' had anything to do w/% weight balance, just interested in the effect of what you do to strip the car weight down/(re)move fuel tanks (if you do), etc., and how that might play into that hi-rate front bar only setup.

What I was trying to get straight in my mind is how giving the car massive understeer tendencies in the front with a strong bar could be adequately balanced out with only -and no bar- equally stiff rear springs /shocks modifications (at least that what I think you are saying). And given that the adjustment can be done, that the rear grip is ok (not too much like a solid axle/aka 'no' suspension) with the degree of stiffness that it seems would be required. Perhaps it's no so major, dunno.

I'm thinking the idea mentioned that it's easier to just mess with one end of the car at track (when you have a pit crew) is the reasoning, rather than any true benefit over a more normal front/rear adjustable sway bar setup and (as I do) using the adjustability of coilovers shock valving to make minor front/rear stiffness adjustments to suit a track or driver desires.

Also, When my car was corner weighted one endlink each end got removed and when it was done one adjustable endlink was installed each end to keep neutral preload.

Creating new post for this. Long voluminious discertation to follow.

To clarify, my "iffy" statement was referring to the length of the stock rear endlinks and their ability to not exert any preload on the RSB (not their strength).

This is a pic expo1 posted of a RB rear swaybar installed on his car;

https://www.rx8club.com/attachment.p...6&d=1099331091

Mine looks like this installed (dip in the arm pointing down), except that with the additional 1/2" koni drop, the swaybar arm ends are pointed upwards even more. If I lowered the car another 1" or thereabouts, I'm concerned that my stock endlinks would push the arm ends even further upwards causing potential preload issues on the bar and/or binding in turns if the RSB arm ends run out of longitudinal travel.

Well, heard a loud "pop" pulling out of work yesterday - and sure enough the other side endlink gave way. WTF.

The bar seemed to rotate freely in the mounts when I replaced the last one. Guess I'll just replace it any cross my fingers.

Did you ever verify your rear sway wasn't installed upside down (the common mistake)? The most likely answer since you don't know the car's history and truth is your more likely to be hit by a meteorite than have 2 endlinks on the rear break only a couple months apart on the same car for no good reason.

If you don't fix the source of the problem, whatever it is, the failures will just continue...

There was a bad run of OE endlinks and he could have easily had two of them on there :dunno:

and you'll run out of shock travel long before the properly mounted rear bar with OE endlinks hits the subframe


and Chik, the end direction is meanigless in your picture post above. It's the link hole position relative to the pivot point that matters (draw the imaginary straight arm line between the two points in your head) and there's no way you can rotate it that much because it will hit the subframe first, and it can't rotate that far before the shock travel gives out. Lowering only means it runs out of shock compression travel sooner.






.

all of this talk about endlinks has got me to thinking... I lowered my car with sprint springs, about a 2 inch drop, and i had to cut the rear endlinks because they simply would not come off. i then ordered OEM replacements and put them on the car, but now that i think about it, i did exactly what you said not to. i tightened them down all the way while the car was in the air. However, following my ignorant move there i had an alignment done by a speed shop in the area here. Question is then, would that have been checked when i had the alignment done? and also if i loosen them and re-tighten them while on the ground, just to be sure, can that affect my alignment and cause me to have to get another one?

thanks in advance.

end links has nothing to do with the alignment. tightening or loosing them won't hurt it.

How in the world are you going to get under the car to mess with the end links once it is on the ground anyway? Might be best just to put a jack under the wheel hub and lift it then mess with the end links. Put the car on jack stands first.

Thanks Mark. I would have to agree with everything you stated. 2 months ago, that post of yours would have made no sense to me...

The sway bar end links aren't a problem..they fully rotate

The suspension links are the ones you want to tighten in a neutral position...

I don't know if this is of any relevance, or if this is normal/abnormal:

I wanted to replace my end-links on the car because I suspected one of them (the front right) was damaged - whenever I drive over bumps, I hear a nice thump louder than the rest on the front right of the car.

I wanted to replace all of them because I didn't want to use OEM end-links. I started by replacing the rears first, as those were easier for me to access. I was trying to take the rear-left one off, and the nut holding it to the car (not the swaybar end) was impossibly tight and I stripped it.

So I proceeded to try to take the sway-bar end off. I successfully got that end off, and immediately the end-link suddenly had a lot of free play. Long story short, the pivot point of the end-link that was still connected to the bar came out of the end-link slot. I'll try to take pictures tomorrow (I still have the broken end-link in my trunk).

I don't know why this happened. The stock end-link pivots felt extremely stiff. I don't know if it is normal for it to be so stiff (barely could move the pivots around). I could only attribute it to age and corrosion (the nuts were rusted onto the screw ends of the end-links).

Let's revisit this. Swaybar end links CAN and DO affect your suspension's alignment. You or your alignment shop may/will/can still obtain your target camber and toe settings. These are generally a little negative camber all the way around, a little toe out in the front and a little toe in the rear as most of us know. The main difference is the pre-load in the suspension. Pre-load is a state of tension. It has energy in it. Examples include: a boxer or karate guy all twisted up and ready to unload a big punch on someone, your golf backswing before you address the ball, pulling a rubber band and holding it and taking a hollow metal bar about as thick as your finger and 3 feet long and twisting it while holding one end steady--perhaps in a vice. All of these things have stored energy. Do I sound like your 8th grade science teacher yet?

The last example above was obviously a car's swaybar. The twist or tension comes from connecting the swaybar end link's which confirm or hold that tension in your car's suspension system. Normally (in my experience) this comes from when people purchase new end links and install them. Generally 1st timers and people who have yet to learn the correct way do it like all of us once did. I use to do it until someone showed me. This post is for you who have yet to learn.

When we jack up one side of the car to get to these endlinks, as most people do, one side of the suspension is compressed while the other (the one up in the air) hangs down. Typically people refer to the one side as "under compression" or compressed and the other side as hanging or "under droop". There is tension in the suspension at this point. When you install your endlinks you are retaining or holding in this tension. Congrats---you are normal. Normal because most of us don't have another option. The correct way would be to disconnect one of your endlinks (you need only disconnect one to remove tension or pre-load from your system), align your car (remember to substitute something for your body weight in the car), set camber, toe, cross and sometimes caster and then reconnect these endlinks (front and rear). You would connect these so that they are very lightly attached. This means that you can tighten the nuts on the endlinks as much as you want but do NOT pull or tighten the length between your swaybar and its connection. For the front his would be the distance of swaybar end with the hole in it to tab on the front lower control arm. And then the end of the rear swaybar with the hole in it to the welded mounting tab bracket on one of the rear lower control arms in the rear.

If you do perform this method (jacking up the side of the car to replace the links ) you must certainly will have contained preload in your suspension system. This can be just in the front or rear or both. This could be a none, a little or a lot.

So picture this. Your car is sitting in the driveway yet the car has a bunch of tension in one or both of the swaybars. They are "twisted" and contain a force within them. This makes the car do wacky stuff as the suspension moves. Generally you wouldn't notice this when driving like your Aunt Matilda to the grocery store and back. The more you use your suspension (like Auto-X or Open track driving) the more this pre-load comes into play and influences the mechanics when your suspension moves. As a general rule this influence is not favorable and your new alignment (or your old alignment with your new end-links installed) impairs its natural ability to work.

So how the Sam Hill do you prevent this? One thing you can do is ask your suspension guys (or better yet tell them) to disconnect one endlink (to remove any tension), do the alignment and simply reattach the end link. Or for the DIY guys raise your entire car off the ground (remember to use a very, very flat and level surface) with equal height above the ground, remove your stock end links and add your new ones. You should be able to grab all found end links in the middle of the link and rattle or jiggle them. This would indicate no preload. You could do this several ways. Most DIY guys that I know in the club racing environment purchase some 2" x 10" or 2" x 12" boards from Lowes or 84 lumber or wherever, cut them down to 1 or 2 foot lengths, stack them up or nail them together and then jack up each side of the and work or step up each side of the car until you can get under it. May I suggest that your emergency brake should be used and the more level the ground the less likely the car tends to roll off and sever your head/legs/arm/other. Raising your car 12" or so equally off the ground is about all you need. Do this anytime your align your car or have it aligned, change your ride height or really anytime you adjust anything in your suspension. Stock end links allow you do to this. Ideally the more vertical your end link is the better it operates as the rate of change in your bar will be more linear. In otherwords if you make your own links (which is really easy to do and a little cheaper than some of the pricepoints you can buy in the market today) but be careful not to make them so short or so long that 2" of suspension travel doesn't result in 1" or 4" of bar movement. A good guide is the approximate length of the stock endlinks or slightly different in you significantly raise or lower your car.

One day I am going to make a video on this but for now this will have to suffice.

Happy rotoring.

Eric

I did mine on a car lift - (the rear's anyways) - because I needed the shop help to remove the stock bits that were pretty much rusted to the car.

However, as a DIY-er in general, will raising only the rear or the front cause preload the the raised side? What I mean is, jacking up the right, setting a jackstand, then jacking up the left, and setting a jackstand of equal height. Is this sufficient to work on the bit of the car that is in the air, or must all 4 wheels be off the ground level to ensure the proper end-link connections?

I think one way to avoid some of this problem when messing w/endlink length is to use the factory lift point frnt and rear - both are on car center...the diff in back, the center crossmember jack point in front...using a suitable 2 ton or better lift jack on level floor.

Personally to remove preload I use one adjustable link at the frontr and one at the rear to compensate for the corner balancing height offsets. As both sides go up together, preload doesn't change much, if at all.

Seriously, some people make everything more difficult than it needs to be.

I've always been able to get the OE links to work without preload, even cornerweighted. By having all four endlink nuts/axle loose you gain the slop of each hole x 4. This has always proven to be adequate for me to get the OE endlinks to fit without binding after the car is settled/cornerweighted/aligned.

Just to put up the pics I promised before of my rear endlinks:

https://i97.photobucket.com/albums/l...u/DSCI0081.jpg
https://i97.photobucket.com/albums/l...u/DSCI0082.jpg

Each of those joints are RIDICULOUSLY hard to move. If it wasn't for the fact that I know they are pivot points, I might have thought they were supposed to be stiff like that.

Well, I replaced the endlink yesterday. I'm pretty sure the bar in on correctly - there is a distinctive "V" in the bar that goes over the exhaust, if the bar were upside down it would point somewhat down and to the rear.

I also verified that my bar rotates freely in the mounts.

The other end of the one that just broke also popped off in my hand while trying to get it off. I'm pretty sure my endlinks were just really weak. What a silly design.

...easy way to tell is study the pics of a bar installed wrong and installed right in this thread...

https://www.rx8club.com/showthread.p...ht=Racing+beat

2nd post pics 3 and 4 show the examples. See the 'kink' pointing up (wrong) and pointing down (right) atfter the 90deg bend and before connecting to the endlink.?

The endlinks have survived tons of abuse on may applications without breaking

you just have a bad set, as long as the bar is correct per your previous post then install a new pair and go about you business :dunno:

It's also possible to install the front endlinks backwards which will cause them to break too. The rear endlinks can go on other side, but the front links have dedicated left and right configurations that can be installed on the wrong side if you're not paying attention

Team - the OEM ones are left and right sided? Or just some aftermarket ones? I never compared them directly....but still, never noticed this before.

The OEM ones. The bottom stud points forward and the upper stud inward. So they are obviously opposite of each other. On a heim joint end link you can turn stud to point either direction, but you still have to point the bottom stud forward. In either case if you mount them so the bottom stud is pointed rearward it will bind until something eventually breaks or bends.