Does the TJ need it’s rear sway bar. Chucked the one on my Xterra but it is a leaf spring vehicle with a longer wheelbase. Would freeway speed handling be too compromised on a TJ?
Thanks
Philip
Thanks
Philip
Does the TJ need a rear sway bar?
- Thread starter Philip
- Start date
OP
OP
Thank you for your response. For my money a TJ is more about slowing down and enjoying the world around you. Did a fair bit of time with Porsches and BMWs and met many nice police officers and highway patrolmen. Done with that. 
Despite well-meaning but totally incorrect comments above, TJs do need their antiswaybars. At least if you want it to handle consistently well when you get into difficult driving situations or, especially, in an emergency maneuver. Far from me just being a safety zealot, this need is due to the inherent instability of a coil spring vs. the leaf springs in earlier models of TJs. CJs and Wrangler YJ's do fine without their antiswaybars but not the TJ's coil spring suspension.
First, I was coming back through the mountains from a weekend camping trip with 3 Boy Scouts and driving on a twisty mountain road. I had no clue what was wrong but I noticed it was handling like crap and I was giving me a pitching/yawing motion when in tight S-turns. Even the Boy Scouts noticed it (making stupid trying to be funny comments) and I ended up slowing way down the rest of the way. It was the next day I found one of the two rear antiswaybar links had broken which completely disables the rear antiswaybar. Replacing it restored the handling back to normal.
Even SERIOUS rock crawlers run front & rear antiswaybars on their TJs. John Currie ran front & rear Antirock antiswaybars on his famous Fire Ant TJ that won the US National Rock Crawling Championships. I was there when he was competing in his final event.
These photos show John's Fire Ant TJ during the competition, a couple of them show his front and rear antiswaybars. My TJ is a rock crawler and it's not a trailer queen... it gets driven on big rocks & driven home on the highway afterward. Front Antirock antiswaybar and stock rear factory antiswaybar. The last two pics are of my TJ.... both antiswaybars connected and keeping the front & rear axles working together instead of fighting each other.
And no, running antiswaybars on a TJ do NOT decrease the usable amount of flex/articulation. If it did us TJ owning/coil spring using rock crawlers wouldn't touch them.
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Lots is not accurate, only the most basic of stripped down model SEs did.
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Man Jerry! You need to find some rockier trails .
I can't imagine getting through that .
I can't imagine getting through that .
It is accurate, a stripped down 4 cyl TJ is still a TJ. and they made lots.
Having driven with a broken front sway bar link, the only change was a slight hesitation as you input for a corner. Fixed the link, the steering was more direct, no hesitation or correction. Yes TJs do handle better/different with sway bars. Not sure their absence is a safety issue tho.
Sway bars were no existent until the 1970s. Only a few high performance cars came with sway bars, often just the front, in the 1960s.
Do you need them? No.
Sway bars were no existent until the 1970s. Only a few high performance cars came with sway bars, often just the front, in the 1960s.
Do you need them? No.
Most cars back then still used leaf spring suspensions. Look at CJs and Wrangler J's which were all leaf springs suspensions until 1996 when the TJ came out. Apples and oranges when compared to the TJ's all coil spring suspension.
Did suspensions with all leaf springs need antiswaybars? Nope. When did antiswaybars start appearing? When coil spring suspensions started becoming popular. Leaf springs are stable in all but one direction. Coil springs are not stable in any direction which is why antiswaybars are used with them.
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So I guess the factory thinks it is fine.
End of discussion right?
You have to understand what sway bars do. For on road use, they essentially reduce traction. A thick front sway bar will cause understeer in panic-type situations. meaning you turn the wheel sharply, and the vehicle continues forward. This is a situation much more easy to recover from than the opposite, which is oversteer, meaning the back of the vehicle tries to pass the front. The reason SE's didn't have rear bars is the front end is so much lighter, it just didn't need them. The other thing they do is reduce body roll, which is more of a comfort thing.
Off-road things change a bit. You want the vehicle to feel more like a cat, poised on all 4's as opposed to placing all of the vehicles weight on the front or rear. An Antirock on 4 with a factory rear bar "feels" perfect to me. about the same amount of bias front to rear.
Here's a useful read written by someone better than me at words.
Anti-roll bars provide two main functions. The first function is the reduction of body lean. The reduction of body lean is dependent on the total roll stiffness of the vehicle. Increasing the total roll stiffness of a vehicle does not change the steady state total load (weight) transfer from the inside wheels to the outside wheels, it only reduces body lean. The total lateral load transfer is determined by the CG height and track width.
The other function of anti-roll bars is to tune the handling balance of a car. Understeer or oversteer behavior can be tuned out by changing the proportion of the total roll stiffness that comes from the front and rear axles. Increasing the proportion of roll stiffness at the front increases the proportion of the total load transfer that the front axle reacts to—and decreases the proportion that the rear axle reacts to. In general, this makes the outer front wheel run at a comparatively higher slip angle, and the outer rear wheel to run at a comparatively lower slip angle, which is an understeer effect. Increasing the proportion of roll stiffness at the rear axle has the opposite effect and decreases understeer.
In short, yes, you want your swaybars connected.
Off-road things change a bit. You want the vehicle to feel more like a cat, poised on all 4's as opposed to placing all of the vehicles weight on the front or rear. An Antirock on 4 with a factory rear bar "feels" perfect to me. about the same amount of bias front to rear.
Here's a useful read written by someone better than me at words.
Anti-roll bars provide two main functions. The first function is the reduction of body lean. The reduction of body lean is dependent on the total roll stiffness of the vehicle. Increasing the total roll stiffness of a vehicle does not change the steady state total load (weight) transfer from the inside wheels to the outside wheels, it only reduces body lean. The total lateral load transfer is determined by the CG height and track width.
The other function of anti-roll bars is to tune the handling balance of a car. Understeer or oversteer behavior can be tuned out by changing the proportion of the total roll stiffness that comes from the front and rear axles. Increasing the proportion of roll stiffness at the front increases the proportion of the total load transfer that the front axle reacts to—and decreases the proportion that the rear axle reacts to. In general, this makes the outer front wheel run at a comparatively higher slip angle, and the outer rear wheel to run at a comparatively lower slip angle, which is an understeer effect. Increasing the proportion of roll stiffness at the rear axle has the opposite effect and decreases understeer.
In short, yes, you want your swaybars connected.
Only if you want to be short-sighted/myopic about the subject. If you personally don't want to use antiswaybars pagrey, that's your decision. Something tells me yours are still in place.
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Personally, I think it is more questionable from a safety standpoint to run a front anti-rock on the street than it is to run without a rear bar. After all Chrysler never put a "soft" front sway bar on one of these that I know of. I have a difficult time understanding why one thing is okay and the other thing puts your safety meter in the red.
I'd like to run an anti-rock someday just to try it, I've never run without the rear bar on mine as you say. I hope anybody reading any of this takes their own safety seriously, this is just the internet.
I'd like to run an anti-rock someday just to try it, I've never run without the rear bar on mine as you say. I hope anybody reading any of this takes their own safety seriously, this is just the internet.
Pagrey, I held off getting an anti-rock forever thinking full disco was the way to go off-road. When I found one on CL for $200 I said why not. Seriously, If I could go back it would have been the first mod I ever did. On-road comfort is greatly increased, stability is not compromised. Off-road comfort and capability is also significantly increased with no compromise.
I read somewhere that there is no such thing as a free lunch.
It's great that you're happy with the bar and $200 seems like a good deal.
It is surprising that Jeep chose to spend all that money on an electric disconnect instead of just slightly reducing the diameter of the front bar. They probably should have consulted Currie before building the JK and JL Rubicon.