I've got my front and rear sway bars back on the car with new bushings and end links. I can't seem to find any torque specs. I looked in my Chilton manual as well as through the AutoZone site but no luck.

 

There really aren't any.

Regardless of whether you can "find" any or not, torque ALWAYS goes with fastener size. Look at the fastener, it's x size, therefore it gets y torque. Period. THINK.... if they'd needed more clamping force, they'd have used bigger hardware; and if the hardware was big enough to apply too much clamping force, the bean counters would have made the designers "value-engineer" it by "right-sizing".

The front sway bar bushings are 10mm bolts. That size should get around 35 - 40 ft-lbs.

The end links don't get a "torque". Instead, tighten them until the rubber squooshes out to just slightly larger than the washers; like, 1/16" or so, NO MORE THAN 1/8" larger.

 

From my 85 shop manual:

Front

end links 13 ft lbs.
sway bar 37 ft lbs.

Rear

end links 12 ft lbs.
sway bar 20 ft lbs.

JamesC

 

Thanks!

 

Awesome James.

And sofa, I agree. With the nylock nuts on most common endlinks as well as the poly bushing, we can't properly torque a fastener in the true sense. It's a good rule of thumb like you mention to take up all the slack then apply a bit more pressure. Too tight and bye bye bushing.

ramey

 

Just put a wonder bar and 36mm front sway bar on my 1992 bird. Did a search and found your answer on how much to tighten the end link nuts. Just want to give you a tip of the hat for your very useful tip. Thanks.

 

Just added a few parts and wanted to assure torque specs as mentioned above that the torque specs worked out great. Here's what i Torqued:

1. Front Sway bar (SPOHN) bushings with steering brace - 37 FT-LBS
2. Front Sway bar end links - 13 FT-LBS
3. Rear Sway bar (SPOHN) bushings- 20 FT-LBS
4. Rear Sway bar end links- 12 FT-LBS

Attached are the difference between the different parts.
5. Pan hard bar (SPOHN) - 60 FT-LBS
6. Rear Lower Control Arms (SPOHN) - 72 FT-LBS

Below are some pics of the difference in them installed and out of the car.

lower control arm from spohn Vs stock

pan hard bar vs stock

 

I have never observed a torque spec for sway bar end links. It's all about the squish of the bushings.

The bolts at the sway bar body mounts are structural so those do get a proper torque based on tightening standards by thread size.

 

Just a heads up, DO NOT use LCA's that have Poly on both ends.
They bind even on the street and cause horrific snap oversteer.
I was almost sent off an AutoX course because of those awful Poly-poly LCA. They got stuck in a turn and when I went to change direction, the axle wouldn't rotate. Then it SNAPPED back like an angry animal.

You want LCA with one end Poly and one end a spherical joint. Either a heim joint or pseudo joint like UMI Roto joint or sphoons del sphere

If you are racing, use a LCA with rods on both ends.
Same goes for the panhardbar.

 

"Torque specs" for FACTORY sway bar end links ONLY apply to FACTORY links with FACTORY hardware in FACTORY applications.

There are some lock nuts that require more than those "specs" just to turn AT ALL, let alone measurably accurately properly compress the resilient material.

The FACTORY gives "torque specs" in the FSM based on what was done in the FACTORY. Anything that differs from the FACTORY potentially alters them. Among the concerns that the FACTORY has, is that the employees (or robots, or space aliens, or who/whatever else is building the cars) has to have consistent, verifiable, repeatable "specs" to build things to. IOW a setting to set their automatic power-driven high-speed assembly machinery to. This DOES NOT NECESSARILY mean that if the "spec" for, say, a lug nut is, for example, 73.8 ft-lbs, that if you tighten it to only 72, or if you reach 75, that the matter will come into contact with the anti-matter and your car will instantaneously evaporate into a black hole; rather, it means that they set their impact guns to 100 N-m at the FACTORY, and that someone with "measure with micrometer, mark with chalk, cut with axe" disease wrote the manual. There are DOZENS of situations like this. The LS guys for example get all wrapped up in tightening their rocker bolts to 22 ft-lbs, and making sure the cam is on the heel for each valve at that point; IN REALITY, the factory most likely tightened them to 30 N-m, and 22 ft-lbs is the closest SAE round-off, even though it has one significant figure too many; and although I haven't been to a plant where they were building those motors, I'd be willing to BET MONEY, if I were the betting kind, that the FACTORY doesn't turn the motor to 16 different settings as they install the rockers, but instead, probably has a giant "gang" thing that hangs down from the ceiling with 8 sockets on it, and they buzz all 8 on a head at the same time and only take about 3 seconds to "torque" them all, and that an employee doesn't ever check them, or even look at them while the machine is doing its thing, or maybe it's ENTIRELY automated and even there isn't even a human being there at the moment.

UNDERSTANDING what the details mean and how they were generated, is more important than slavishly adhering to some random "number". In the case of sway bar end links, the important thing IS NOT the "number", it's attaining the proper crush on the rubbery substance, whatever "number" that might happen to take, for whatever material it happens to be, and whatever hardware happens to be employed. (for example, it would be possible to use non-locking nuts, and a 2nd nut to jam them; what would the "torque spec" be then? what if the material was Delrin or Teflon instead of rubber?) And for the bushings, it's that the correct torque for the fastener size is applied; which has NOTHING WHATSOEVER to do with whether it's sway bar bushings, or engine accessories, or any other random part where the same size hardware is used.

 

It's not Rocket Surgery. Let this thread die...