Sway bar, anti-roll bar, torsion bar, torsion beam, torsion spring. All of these terms are interchangeable, simply meaning a bar that can “twist” without breaking.
The varying terms can cause confusion and for whatever reason, they are each preferred by one application or another; off-highway applications use the term sway-bar, sports car folks like anti-roll bar, and torsion bar is more clinically used in general engineering terms.
These devices are good for on-road handling manners, but in the process severely reduce suspension articulation. The first thing most people do upon getting a new wheeler is take off the sway bars. It’s no secret that improving compression and droop can be affected immensely by merely taking off those spoilsport handling nannies. Now what you have is a vehicle that can rip its brake lines out because it has so much down travel, which is good for traction by keeping more equal weight on each tire left to right. The only down side is that on the road that same super-flexy rig has the handling of a 4500 pound drunken shopping cart.
Many consider this unsafe if the vehicle is driven on the road at all and use sway bar “quick” disconnects; stock sway bar on the street, nothing on the trail. The only issue with this is that it’s time consuming and irritating to have to disco’ and reattach after a trail ride, so much so that people find themselves simply not doing it. While the sway bar discos address the on road down sides of not running sway bars, there are disadvantages to running that way on the trail as well.
In a severe side hill situation, the monster flex you love showing off on RTI ramps, loading docks or junk cars is kicking your ass. Basically, all of the weight of your frame and body is leaning downhill, transferring weight to the low side tires. If it gets steep enough, that can cause the horizon to switch its normal orientation and put you on your lid, leaving you sitting in a pile of old CDs, hot pocket wrappers and air fresheners. Hopefully your cooler, spare tire, tools and fire extinguisher were all strapped down.
There is a middle ground.
Tags: 4x4, antirock, crawling, currie industries, disconnects, flex, Jeep, Jeepers, JK, off road, off-highway, rock, swaybar, TJ, torsion, trail, XJ
