We came up with a plan for my son’s rear sway bar and finally got around to implementing it tonight. He mentioned (eluded rather)that a lot of the lifted WJ’s around weren’t running rear sway bars but I told home it would be a cold day in hell before I let that thing leave our shop without a rear sway bar, especially as high as he’s lifted. Off-road benefits, yes, but as a daily driver and an emergency maneuver and he’ll have his hands full trying to keep it under control with all of that body roll. NO WAY will I allow that. I told him I realize it is his Jeep but my shop, my rules and I couldn’t live with myself if I allowed that and he or his eventual family were injured.
The stock sway bar was mounted on the axle with links going upward to the frame. I’m not a fan of axle mounted sway bars in an off road application, on a hot rod of course but they seem to be more in the way on a 4x4 that will see off road use.
The fuel tank on the WJ is directly behind the axle and quite low. We will be performing a tank lift in phase two of his build but even then it will still be in the way and not conducive to the placement of a sway bar. My son has perused several Grand Cherokee and Cherokee forums in search of what others have done and there have been a few that have gone through the unibody’s frame rails with an Antirock sway bar but this makes the links attach at a steep angle.
We had a heavy duty JK rear sway bar kicking around and after playing around with it we determined that if we run it in front of the rear axle sweeping to the rear it will basically wrap around the springs just like on a JK. The task then became coming up with a mounting solution after we had determined general location.
We used some 3”x6”x1/4” plate, drilled and tapped for 3/8”-16 bolts and threaded nuts on the backside before welding them and creating a nut plate.
We then drilled a couple of 3/4” holes in the bottom of the frame for clearance of the welded nuts and allow the plate to sit flat. We then welded the plates creating a flat, strong mounting surface for the sway bar bushings and mounting brackets.
Lastly before closing up the shop my son fabricated some reinforcing plates for the inside of the frame in which to mount the rear upper limiting straps to.
Tomorrow night we will knock the undercoating off and weld the upper limiting strap brackets in place and that should about complete the fabrication aspect of phase one of this build.
I ordered his driveshafts today so they should be ready for pickup either tomorrow or Thursday. Hopefully over the weekend he can get the frame painted and we can begin final assembly.
One last thing we will have to address is the connection of the WJ emergency brake cables to the JK’s rear brakes. I have an idea but will have to do some more measuring once we get the rear axle in place for the last time. We could have custom cables made easy enough but for a daily driver I prefer to use OE parts as much as possible.
Thanks for looking.
