Improved Handling With New Sway Bar Links and Bushings!!!

[pcmos]

I figured I would throw this out for anyone who is interested in drastically improving handling on this car. After shopping around for a while I finally settled on a set of generic polyurethane sway bar bushings and end links from Energy Suspension. My intention is to replace the rear set in the near future, but for now I have only replaced the fronts. I have a 2000 LeSabre Limited w/ Gran Touring. The front sway bar I believe is officially 30mm, although my measurements at the bushings with a set of calipers gave me about 28.5 or 29. I replaced the front bushings with the energy suspension unit rated to 28.5mm. Although I realize the sway bar end should be roughly parallel to the control arm, I found that raising it up a little with longer links caused rotation through a more resistive arc. There are no clearence problems with this configuration, so I settled on some end links which were a bit longer than the factory units. I do need to mention one very important catch. The generic bushings are all flat on the bottom, unfortunately the H body uses bushings that are rounded on the bottom and sort of fit snugly into a dished out contour in the frame. Obviously, if you simply mount the new bushings in place of the old, you will have a gap at the bottom, which is unacceptable for various reasons. To make a long story short, I found a "U clamp" leaf spring kit at autozone which had two very nice, heavy flat steel plates with a hole on each end. The spacing of these holes closely matches the bolt holes for the bushings on the lesabre. I simply took some time with a grinder attachment on my dremel and enlarged the holes outward to create sort of oval shaped openings which extended far enough out to accomodate the spacing of the bushing bolts. By placing this "backer plate" down first and then placing the new generic bushing on top of it, I was able to provide a nice flat mounting surface for the new bushing. Please be very careful if you attempt this to take the time to extend the holes out far enough in your custom plates, if you don't you'll surely end up cross threading the bolts (I learned the hard way). If this happens don't panic the bolt threads are M10 with a pitch of 1.5, just buy a tap and re-tap the threads in the frame, from below. I'm sure this all sounds like a trivial upgrade but once you have those solid end links and bushings installed correctly, it will provide one of the most drastic improvements in handling you could imagine on this car. So far I can only vouch for what happens with the heavy 30 mm bar that comes with the Gran Touring package, but I'm sure the upgrade would improve performance on all models, you just have to purchase properly sized bushings. If I find that people are interested in this post I'll put together more details on what I did, first I want to upgrade the rear also so I can write about both jobs. I can tell you honestly that with all the upgrades I've performed on this car my handling performance is rapidly approaching what I feel when I drive my friend's 2003 infiniti G35, no joke. I've sacrificed pretty much all of the cushy ride now, but it sure is a heck of a lot of fun to drive. The Bridgestone Turanza V rated tires also vastly improved cornering performance on this car. I'm still running the factory size tire of 225 60R16, primarily because I wouldn't trade the 16" chrome rims I have for anything, they look too good. Optimaly I probably would have traded up to 17" rims and a lower profile Turanza LS V or Z tire, but looks are as important to me as performance. Running the higher tire also retains a little bit of comfort in my ride. Please understand that if you do decide to upgrade your sway bar links and bushings, you will find that your ride is much stiffer in general, you'll feel more road bumps, etc. Essentially you'll notice a great reduction in body roll in hard turning and lane change manuevers, it also has virtually eliminated this car's tendancy to sway in a heavy cross wind. Finally, I have noticed something I didn't expect as a result of my sway bar upgrades, steerback is much sharper, you get a much quicker return on the steering wheel coming out of a turn.

[maxwedge]

My 2003 std Les. had no touring susp, added urethanes to front bar, installed factory rear sway set up in rear, vast difference in cornering , but I only have the 15's, ft struts are still too soft though, next step. BTW nice job on you car.

[pcmos]

How did you end up overcoming the difference in shape between the factory bushings and the aftermarket ones? Were you able to find poly bushings with a round bottom surface or did you just leave the gap? Initially I wasn't inclined to do anything about the gap but after an aggressive test drive I found the poly jacket had slipped under the metal bracket a bit. At that time I decided to use a backer plate to provide a flat mounting surface for the new bushings and I'm sure glad I took the time because it really made all the difference. With the flat plate installed I immediately noticed an improvement over what I felt without the plate. If your not sensative to a bumpy ride, you should look into 16" rims with lower profile tires like the bridgestone turanza or such, it should be possible to keep the overall wheel and tire diameter similar to your stock 15's with the higher factory tire profile. I installed the monroe struts up front and the monroe max air shocks in the rear, the max airs are decently stiff, but the sensa trac units up front are still too soft for my taste. I really wish I could adapt a bilstein, koni, or tokico to this car for the front strut. None of the above make a strut specifically for modern H body cars. I may just upgrade to KYB units for the fronts, they do have an application specific strut for the 00+ LeSabre.

[maxwedge]

Originally Posted by pcmos

How did you end up overcoming the difference in shape between the factory bushings and the aftermarket ones? Were you able to find poly bushings with a round bottom surface or did you just leave the gap? Initially I wasn't inclined to do anything about the gap but after an aggressive test drive I found the poly jacket had slipped under the metal bracket a bit. At that time I decided to use a backer plate to provide a flat mounting surface for the new bushings and I'm sure glad I took the time because it really made all the difference. With the flat plate installed I immediately noticed an improvement over what I felt without the plate. If your not sensative to a bumpy ride, you should look into 16" rims with lower profile tires like the bridgestone turanza or such, it should be possible to keep the overall wheel and tire diameter similar to your stock 15's with the higher factory tire profile. I installed the monroe struts up front and the monroe max air shocks in the rear, the max airs are decently stiff, but the sensa trac units up front are still too soft for my taste. I really wish I could adapt a bilstein, koni, or tokico to this car for the front strut. None of the above make a strut specifically for modern H body cars. I may just upgrade to KYB units for the fronts, they do have an application specific strut for the 00+ LeSabre.

I did not change the bracket bushings, couldn't find any for the smaller ft sway bar in the std suspension, I used Moog 8989 for the end links, which besides being urethanes have a slightly longer spacer which stiffens the bar a little. KYB is your best strut choice, never was happy with any Monroe strut/shock.