 This is the anti roll bar pre-assembled on the bench. It is a quality piece and actually works! |
If you install the anti-sway control it is not necessary to pre-load the control arms however. A good baseline is to adjust both arms to equal length and as close as possible to the center to center length of the previous arms. All of the hardware needed is included with the control arms and they simply bolt in. I should mention that although the cool spherical bearings installed in the housing are the best way to go they are not necessary in order to use these arms as the control arms will work with stock type bushings.
Next up is the lower control arms part # C8002 and they are just as simple to install and have a adjustable spring perch permitting ride height adjustments with three different sets of mounting holes. The arms use grease- able Delron bushings with grease fittings and all the required mounting hardware is included. The kit includes a couple of steel plates with holes in them that sandwich the rear bushing and fit into the stock mounting pocket. They have three holes to allow you to mount the rear of the arms in different positions which basically changes the suspension geometry for more or less “bite” in the suspension. I installed mine in the stock position for now.
The torque box reinforcement plates, part # C8015, are pretty self explanatory and require welding. They help hold together the factory boxes and keep them from cracking. Over the years I have found and fixed more than my fair share of cracks around the lower torque boxes and this is a pretty good way to beef them up.
The next installation was the one I was most looking forward too. The Competition Engineering anti-roll bar part # C2020 is the perfect compliment to the rest of the components and I can see clearly now that I should have done this long ago. Did you get
the part about me “seeing clearly”, part # C2020, get it, never mind… Anyway, the anti-roll bar is the most technically demanding component to install but if you follow the directions and use a little common sense it will go smooth as silk. I will admit that me being a guy I don’t always follow the directions per say, instead I prefer to blaze a new trail and rely on past experiences and knowledge of how things work so that’s what I did. And amazingly it actually worked!
The whole key to installing an anti-roll bar is to mount it as level and even front to back in the chassis as possible. The directions say to use the supplied self tapping screws inserted through the pre-drilled holes in the mounting brackets to temporarily hold the brackets in position. After placing the brackets in the desired positions according to the directions I noticed that the adjacent factory Ford cross member was not positioned square in the chassis and the corners of the crossmember that were supposed to fit flush against the Comp Engineering brackets were not in fact square corners but instead more of a rounded nature.
 Here you can see the upper control arm and the anti sway bar as they fit in the chassis. The housing was lowered down for this shot. |
So, in order to position the brackets evenly and square to each other and the car I had to massage the corners by slitting them in the creases and then using a chisel and a hammer I made them square and welded them back solid. Now the brackets fit nice and snug into the corners and would give me a better surface area to weld to. Instead of using the factory supplied self tapping screws to hold the brackets in place for welding I decided to use a couple of large “C” clamps instead. That way I could really “draw” the two pieces together tightly and be assured nothing would move while welding.
