Well, I decided to do my own direct comparison between these two bars, and the results are interesting.
First I'll look at the overall quality of the pieces, then the actually design, fit, and install.

The first impression of these pieces makes you wonder which is really better.

The total amount of welding required to fix the brackets on the on bar on the spohn piece was roughly totaled to 6.25'', pretty nice. The welds were of exceptional quality, however the brackets were just butt welded, or just connected to the bar by that weld. Looking at the TDS piece you see that a slit was actually cut through the center of the bar, the bracket was slid into place, then secured with massive use of welds, however looking at both at the same time you really begin to appreciate how perfect and consistent the welds on spohn's piece are. There are no little bits in the finish AT ALL on the spohn piece from the welding, while there are a few particles in the finish on the TDS piece. Also, on the TDS piece there is a noticable amount of distortion due to the welds on the tubular piece, although they probably don't affect function that much, the fact is they can, one thing that took points off in my mind.

Further into the design you notice that on the TDS piece the brackets have a 90* degree bend running along the majority of their length, this got me to think, if you have a flat piece of paper, it will bend easily, you fold it so it has a 90* angle in it, it will take alot of weight to make it collapse, very cool idea integrated into the design, looking at the spohn piece it makes you wonder how much thought went into the design, Lon was thinking WAY outside the box with his design.
Then the install, spohn's piece was supposed to be easier with only 4 bolts instead of 6 like on the TDS piece that needed to be removed, however, the holes weren't in the right spots! I had to remove a VERY UNACCEPTABLE amount of material to get it to fit right, and yes I did install it correctly, I looked at every way it could go in while keeping in mind the correct way as seen on research here. The car was lifted using ramps, and has never had any severe damage. While the TDS piece, while 4 of the 6 the holes were the long style, in my mind allowing SOME play, the other two were not and were mounted to a very strong mount. Not to mention the 4 long style holes to the sway bar brackets were angled to reduce the chances of play. And well, the TDS piece bolted in with NO mods needed to make it fit.

The powdercoated finish on both was excellent, so let's ignore that for now.

With the spohn piece I of course noticed a huge difference as compared to nothing while testing it. But with the TDS piece I noticed that the front end and the steering felt even slightly better, not much, but just slightly noticable.
Overall the design on the TDS piece is EXCELLENT and the fit was great, however, I'm not really too impressed by the welds as compared to the spohn one. Spohn's welds are great, but his design wasn't impressive. If both were to fail in my mind, I think it would be at the welds and on the TDS piece even possibly on the tubing where the brackets mount. The brackets might be even more prone to bending on the TDS, but the impressive design helps prevent this. With the thickness of the tubing being the same for both pieces however, and spohns design using less welding and just a butt joint to mount the bracket I feel it would fail first compared to the TDS. In the end, I have a lot of spohn parts on my car, but the wonderbar is not one of them.


Specs
TDS:
Tubing Length: 24''
Diameter: 1''
Tubing thickness: .120''
Total Length of welds: 20''
Bracket to bar connection: Slide in slit, weld in place
Mounts: 6 points to chassis
Cool Trick: EXCELLENT design
Worst Trick: Slightly Shabby Welds

Spohn:
Tubing Length: 30''
Diameter: 1.25''
Tubing thickness: .120''
Total Length of welds: 6.25''
Cool Trick: Near PERFECT welds
Worst Trick: Poor fit, needed to be modified
Bracket to bar connection: Butt Joint, weld in place
Mounts: 4 point to chassis

 

nice writeup.

my experiance has been identical to yours, except my TDS bar had really nice welds too.

 

Yeah! Now I feel special because I did some constructive contributing

 

Nice write up.

Can you give a comparison of the TDS/Spohn aftermarket Wonderbars vs. the stock unit?

Would it be worth it for those of us that have the stock WB to replace it with an aftermarket unit?

 

Well, I did some research for the hell of it, and found some cool info.
The tubing, tiny, .75'', and the brackets are basically just stamped and cut sheet metal and I have yet to see how they mount to the tube, probably just wrapped around and tack welded, if that. We all know how sheet metal flexes though compared to the aftermarket laser cut brakets.
Personally, if I had a stock wonderbar I'd stick with it. The TDS's third mounting hole did make a slightly noticable difference in daily driving over the aftermarket 2 hole design. Not only are lon's brackets .130'' thick, they have that 90* angle to reduce flex further. I can only imagine what the sheetmetal must flex like. I bought Lon's just for the hell of it, pretty dumb investment for such a tiny improvement but it is a better piece.
For normal people, buy aftermarket wonderbars to replace stock ones if you are really into road racing, that's just my personal opinion though. Here's a pic I ripped from ebay

 

pic of stock bar

 

I too had to remove a tremendous amount of material from one bolt hole on the sphon piece. I wonder why he has it like this. It is certainly a quick fix on his part.

 

Think ajustable wonder bar...lol

 

One more plug for the TDS wonderbar. It will fit the '82 model cars. These had a one-off bolt pattern for the sway bar and no other wonderbar is designed with this in mind.

 

I have the TDS design 1. Which is a cross between stock and his design 2

It has same size tube as stock.
Plates are slid in the end like design 2
Welding on it wasnt the the greatest looking, but looked solid to a certified welder.

I have no complaints, 2 years and it still looks like the day I bought it.

I agree, nice tech info

 

At one time I had both bars to compare also. What I didn't like about Steve's bar is that it interfered with the lower part of the radiator shroud, and would involve cutting it to install it and not have anything rubbing. Lon's bar didn't fit exactly right either as the (then) bolt holes were about 1/2" off and would involve enlarging them to make it fit. Since then he has revised the design to be like the GM bar in the fact that he has slots now instead of just holes.

Ironically, I have stock GM bars on both my cars...I just had their bars to compare them also, then sold them.


Ed

 

I run a Global West Steering brace- fit perfect and is extremely heavy duty.

With that said- it makes no difference to get any larger unit than the more than adequate TDS, Spohn, Or GW designs. Every one of them gives the proper support to the steering box frame support.

I will say boldly- that if you felt a difference at all from installing one of these braces, then you have a weekness in your frame to begin with. There should be NO noticiable difference. What the brace is designed for is to prevent the frame from cracking from lateral loading of the steering box pulling from the frame rail its mounted to. GM put them on the wider wheeled IROCS because the quick ratio boxes were under such high torque and pushing/pulling from the mount point, thus cracking the framerail.

The wonderbar was designed to keep the integraty of the framerail and prevent weekening/breaking over time. If you noticed a difference when installing one- then I would strongly suggest also having your frame section up front checked out and restregthened via welds to original condition- then bolt on the wonderbar to keep it that way.

 

If I were to worry about anything it would be weld quality.

 

For the weld quality you can never judge from the out side or how nice it looks... The way do do this (I know as my father works with this) is to actually cut throught the weld (in this case cut throiugh the hole tube) and then polish the surface use acid to etch the weld surface. This way you can see how deep the weld gone into the materil (tube and bracket). Even if a weld looks nice on the surface cutting and etching might reveal that the weld never bite in to the material being welded and just kind of sits on the surface, a "bad" looking weld could actually be much better and hold the parts together much better.

So if you like to properly evaluate the welds on Lon's and Steve's products you have to cut them.

 

Joez88Camaro:- Thanks for posting such a detailed write-up. Very impressive! We should all try to contribute more stuff as high quality as this.

 

It would be interesting to see what Mr. Salgren and Mr. Spohn have to say about this review, especially about the welding and design comments.

 

nice write up and ill prolyl go TDS when i get my wonderbar

 

I will admit I know next to nothing about welding, however visually seeing even and smooth detailed welds makes you feel much better, when part of the tubing gets distorted from a weld (obviously not good) it kinda makes you wonder what could be underneath what you can't see. For what wonderbars do though, it is practically impossible for them to fail unless they are put under some unnatural amount of stress (a crash). However, having a convertible (or any 3rdgen) with a very stiff suspension makes you appreciate having very good quality chassis reinforcement and makes you want to steer towards having the best. I believe that TDS made the best wonderbar and posted why. I had to push the car to tell the differences, but on the TDS in the extremes my steering felt just a bit more accurate and required just that much less from the driver.

 

I just installed the BMR piece and it bolted up perfectly. Install was done in about 15 minutes. I think the tubing is about 1.00", but I'll measure it tonight and get a picture of it on the car. Its kinda weird but the bar is not at a 90* angle to the mounting brackets, rather (on the inside angles) one is about 80* and the other 100* so its slightly staggered. It fits well though.

 

Stock" Steering box Support "on my 87 IROZ and still no problems with it after 17 yrs.

 

actually, the opposite is true.

seeing a grounded smooth weld makes me wonder why the weld had to be grounded.... id rather see a lumpy strong weld, then a ground pretty one whos quality you cant see...

and while distortion isnt good, atleast you know the heat penatrated the metal. so if the distortion doesnt effect the parts usage, i dont have a prob with it.

 

True, I agree with you there, however, your probably already know that it seems spohn doesn't grind his welds down and they looked of excellent quality with nothing to hide them up. Not to bad mouth Lon's welds as they do the job quite well, but the distortion and the unevenness in his sets spohn's apart.

 

Most likely two different types of welds

I know that Spohns are TIG welded (Perferred). And the TDS one might be just MIG welded (You can get splatter without using sheilding gas)

 

Just a FYI; I fired the welder (me). My vocation before starting TDS was as a Manufacturing and Mechanical Engineer. Sure I took the requisite welding classes in High School and College, but I never claimed to be a AWS certified welder. I out-sourced the last batch of bars that were made earlier this year. As a result, weld quality has improved markedly. It never was a strength issue, mainly a cosmetic issue. I'm sure if you saw the current product your comments about the welds would change for the better.

Also something I haven't previously mentioned, the construction method was improved well over a year ago (the Engineer in me looking to improve the product). Previously I was slotting the center bar as you described. Now the mounting brackets are slotted when laser-cut to accept the bar. The change simplified assembly, improved quality and maintained strength of the product. The change from slotted center bar to slotted brackets is difficult to see at a glance.

Lon Salgren
Top-Down Solutions

 

i bought lons wonderbar and i love it, its a sturdy peice. and not to offend lon but pretty much everyone i know has been welding for atleast 5 years and say the welds could of been better, the welds are strong and won't fail, just cosmetically could of been better.

basically the welds are strong just not pretty

 

Bought TDS over the winter, finally installed couple weeks ago. Fit great, works great. No complaints. Welds were a little uncosmetic, but who cares, nobody is looking under my car anyway. As long as it works, which it does, I'm happy. Nice piece.

 

an x-ray or ultrasound test will show any inconsistencies in fusion or porosity which could weaken the welds. no cutting required.

 

Well, Lon was one of the first folks I "met" on this forum. I'll be buying a TDS wonderbar soon.

This thread actually cemented the decision. Not because it proves empirically that the TDS bar is the better product... but because I know I need this support in my suspension in the first place.

Great thread.

 

Just to kick in my $.02, I don't where/when you got our wonderbar you have in your pic, but that thing is REALLY old...I can tell by the pic, the design has been updated two times since the model you show. I guarantee there are no fitment problems with the mounting holes now, we haven't had a complaint on that for close to a year.

Good write up!

Steve

 

Both of them are supposively the older models, I bought the TDS one from hawks and and did this writeup a few days after I got it, figure based on the fact that it came from hawks and wasn't drop shipped that he probably had some sitting around. Steve though, I've got all the tools I need and the time to install some stock style tubular A-arms! I'm glad to see you back on the boards, it's been WAAAAYYY too long. What's different about the new version though?

 

I just looked it up, nearly 10 months since your last post! The board knows you have a bunch of stuff on big backorder, (so you definitely busy) but I know I at least would like to know the progress of some of the parts you were talking about manufacturing that were being planned.

 

I just got done putting on a spohn wonderbar, adj. panhard bar, and sfc's. Bolted up easily without a problem. Compared to the stock F41 suspension it is night and day difference. Our 04 nissan maxima would have wooped the camaro on a road course before but not anymore. Already had his lca's, probably buy his adj torque arm in the near future, that should make it handle even better.

Now I just need better brakes.

 

Couple of the holes were elongated to solve the fitment issues IIRC.

Kat

 

We don't have anything on big back order, that was back in the Spring when we moved in to the new shop. Took awhile to get caught up from the move, but we're stocked up good now.

We're working on the a-arms, etc. as I type Hope to have the full front kit out early winter at the latest. I'll post details as they become available.

Steve

 

Installed one of Steves wonderbars just the other day . . . no fitment problems at all. Didn't take more than 20 minutes.

 

If ya stop screwing arround posting on msg boards you might just get them done a bit faster

Kat

 

Yeah! I've been waiting for this for a while! Desperate for some Tubular a-arms. Must... feed... addiction.. need.... suspension parts.


I should just switch over to illegal substances.


The strut mounts are good stuff though. I guess my shocks were bottoming out pretty hard and they did the trick.