Most expensive Conversion: Coach or Skoolie?

[davido]

Your anti sway bar may not be the limiting factor anyway. I doubt the shocks are long enough to allow much suspension drop. Springs are pretty stiff on HD rigs also. But so is the overall weight, so that may cancel.

[Mountain Gnome]

Originally Posted by davido

Your anti sway bar may not be the limiting factor anyway. I doubt the shocks are long enough to allow much suspension drop. Springs are pretty stiff on HD rigs also. But so is the overall weight, so that may cancel.

Releasing the sway bar allows the axle to articulate better on uneven ground. I.e. one wheel up, one down. May only be 6" overall difference, but that's a lot of stress on the bus. With the sway bar attached, the bar must flex/twist when the driving surface is not flat, and some of that stress is on the body, and the body must flex, also, which is why another member here blew out a windshield recently hitting "the mother of all potholes" on the highway driving the same model bus as I do. I see and hear that corner of my bus creak and flex just pulling in and out of driveways, at an angle especially, and a peak underneath tells me it is the swaybar causing that creaking and flexing, based on the geometry of the attachment points. A lot of that stress is also on the brackets, likely why the bolts in mine disappeared.
I'm not talkin' a rock-crawler bus. Just allowing a vehicle engineered for very flat ground to work smoother on mildly rutted out and washboarded roads.


Just make sure you re-attach the anti-sway (stabalizer) bar before getting back on the pavement going over 25-30 mph. A bus on two wheels going around a turn has quite a bit less traction, and on it's side is not so good.

[davido]

I’m aware of how it works. I’m into off-roading stuff also. Suspension travel is limited by several things. Antisway bars are only one. Others include spring stiffness, spring length, and shock length. If the shock maxes out, the rest doesn’t matter.

The likely issue is that street shocks are not very long because the suspensions are not designed for much travel. On an 4x4, it’s different. They have longer shocks and springs that are designed for droop. In those cases, the highway anti-sway bars are the limiting factor. The shocks and springs are much more likely to be limiting factors on street rigs. I could cut the sway bars totally off on my car and it still wouldn’t change the drop on the suspension. It’s not the limiting factor.

Worth a look before you spend a bunch of time fabricating something that makes zero change.

[Mountain Gnome]

Originally Posted by davido

I’m aware of how it works. I’m into off-roading stuff also. Suspension travel is limited by several things. Antisway bars are only one. Others include spring stiffness, spring length, and shock length. If the shock maxes out, the rest doesn’t matter.

The likely issue is that street shocks are not very long because the suspensions are not designed for much travel. On an 4x4, it’s different. They have longer shocks and springs that are designed for droop. In those cases, the highway anti-sway bars are the limiting factor. The shocks and springs are much more likely to be limiting factors on street rigs. I could cut the sway bars totally off on my car and it still wouldn’t change the drop on the suspension. It’s not the limiting factor.

Worth a look before you spend a bunch of time fabricating something that makes zero change.

You miss the point. It is the stress of different heights on the bus itself, not a greater amount of "drop". Yep, my bus' shocks are pretty short-throw.


Articulation is not drop. They are different things. I don't care if I gain or loose any suspention travel. I want one front wheel to go up, while the other goes down, without stressing the swaybar brackets and the actual frame or body of the bus.