Chevelle Anti-Roll
 

Hey guys,
I just got a 66 chevelle with comp engineering ladder bar set up utilizing the stock coil springs and shocks. The car wants to twist real bad under launch so to remedy this the former owner put a 1 1/4 inch thick shim under the passenger side rear coil and also added an air bag to it. I can understand the reason he did it was to preload the right rear tire but when the car levels out it is headed down the track almost 3 inches higher on the passenger side.
I'm considering upgrading to a coilover shock setup and I have had people tell me I need an anti roll bar also. Just after your opinions.
Thanks,
Dave

anti-roll
 

A car with ladder bars should not roll. You might have a rear end housing that's twisting. If it ain't a 9 inch, check the axle tubes where they go into the housing.

Thanks
 

Mike,
Thanks for your reply I diddn't even think of the axle housing twisting. I have a 12 bolt with 4.88s and a spool. I'm going out of memory here that the axle tubes are pressed into the center section, Would a guy just go ahead and weld a bead around them or just spot weld em? or do you have any other method of fixing it if this is the problem. Again thanks for your help I also look forward to any other suggestions from anyone else.

Dave

Take the rear end apart completely.
Center punch and drill a hole in 4 equal spaced places through the center housing and the axle tubes.
Get 4 carriage bolts per side that have a rounded head on them. or any blt with a thin head.
stick the bolts through and tighten nut on them.
Clean area to be welded thoroughly
Now you are ready to carefully weld the axle tubes to the center housing.

Careful now and remember that heat pulls the metal so keep the heat as even as you can all the way around the housing. That usually ends up with short stitches of welding and across from that stitch you do another short stitch and keep alternating back and forth until it is all welded.

Last you can tack the nut to the bolts you stuck through.

Purpose of the bolts. Far too often welded housing tubes fail and the weld breaks. The bolts will act like 4 pins on each side giving additional strength for the weld to hold.

Ed

Thanks guys
 

I have to wonder though if the axle tubes are twisting inside the center section wouldn't it be leaking? there is no leaks on mine. Is there any way of testing to see if this is happening?
Thanks again Dave

i had a simular problem.but with no bars.so i put on a 3rd arm.if it happens not to be the tubes,which it sounds like it. a 3rd arm fixed mine.but i'd try what he said first.

If, by "twist," you mean the left front is rising before the right front, this is a natural result of the reaction to the driveshaft torque and has nothing to do with axle housing twist. The twist also indicates that the rear tires are not equally loaded during launch, meaning that you're not getting maximum performance from your rear tires.

An anti-roll bar will certainly reduce such twist, but it can never completely eliminate it. You need a torque reacting against the driveshaft torque to cancel it and this requires an asymmetric suspension adjustment. In other words, one solution would be to adjust the right ladder differently from the left.

The effectiveness of such an adjustment should be verified with a traction dyno, as described on Pages 4, 5, and 6 of my site.

Thank you!
 

Holy Nuts!!!
Thank you guys all for the wealth of information, I checked my rear end and mine is already welded so I really dont think the axle tubes are moving in the center section. I'm checking out your pages Billyshope and trying to figure out my next move.
Thank all of you this is more help than I was expecting,
Sincerely,
Dave

In a ladder bar suspension the rear housing is acting as a giant anti-roll bar. It should not be needed in a ladder bar car......Something is wrong with the setup. Can you get a pic of the rear susp.?