Learn how to install Hellwig anti-sway bars on a lifted pickup truck to improve cornering traction and cornering capabilities. Special appearance from David Wheeler at Hellwig Products.

Video Transcription

How to Install a Hellwig Sway Bar Hi, I am Chris Duke and this is Motorsz TV. Chris Duke: Welcome to Motors. Today we have a special guest star in the shop; it is David Wheeler from Hellwig Products who came down from Visalia, California to help us install his front/rear sway bars on their project truck for F150. Welcome to the show David. David Wheeler: Hey, Chris. Chris Duke: You want to talk about sway bars for a little bit. David Wheeler: Sure. Chris Duke: Right on, let us do it. So David, what exactly is a sway bar and how does it work? David Wheeler: A sway bar is essentially a torsion bar and it does not come into lay until the vehicle tries to take it over. When the body tries to roll, the sway bar pushes back against the body keeping the vehicle flatter and improving Hellwig performance. Chris Duke: There is one of the many factors out there to make sway bars. How these Hellwig products differ from them? David Wheeler: Hellwig is all a manufacture in the after market in making a heat treated 41/40 chrome molding steel sway bar. What that means is the hand user is that heat treated bar is 50% stronger in fatigue strength than a non-heat treated bar and that means that this sway bar is going to handle a lot more abuse and that fail in the demanding application. Chris Duke: So today we got a project to build over here. It is for the F150, it has been lifted up, 6 inches than then some of 35. Once we put the front, the rear sway bar on this thing what kind of differences can we expect to see? David Wheeler: The front bar is going to be an 8 of an inch upsize over the stock bar. Chris Duke: Okay. David Wheeler: The front bar is going to be an 1-7/16 which is about a 30% improvement in all its thickness over the factory bar. The rear bar is a one inch diameter bar which is going to be a 100% improvement over what is on there which is nothing, so we are adding a rear sway bar outsizing the front sway bar which means the vehicle is going to stay flatter on their turns, easier to control and better performance in their towing and on the loads. Chris Duke: Cool, I am looking forward to that and so what other products does Hellwig make and what kind of vehicles? David Wheeler: Well, we make sway bars for a variety of vehicles. We make sway bars for Golf Carts, the Basel Carts, The Trucks, The Motorhomes, even classic vehicles. So we make sway bars with diameters of 5/8 of an inch all the way to 2-3/8 of an inch. And so we cover the full spectrum of vehicles out there. Chris Duke: So today, we got everything laid out here on our table. Tell us what we are looking at. David Wheeler: We have just got the basics here for discussion. What we have here is saddles. These will allow the sway bars to be mounted on to the axel. The cells are test with u-bolts go around the axel through the holes in the cell. The sway bar is attached to the cell by putting the u-plate over the bushing and then the sway bar is mounted to the saddle which is mounted to the axel. To attach the sway bar to the front, we have our heavy duty adjust. Since this is a lifted application, we will need a longer inlay. These are adjustable and free inch increments and they can be mounted to the club as it is bolted on to the sway bar. Chris Duke: Okay, cool. Sounds pretty heavy duty. Let us take a look at what tools we need to get this thing onto the truck. David Wheeler: Okay, sway bar can mean stall with basic hand tools couple of end wrenches in 9/16ths and 5/8ths in adjustable wrench, a few sockets here. We have 5/8s, 11/16ths and 3/4s, the ratchet, a 6 inch and a 3 inch extension and a torch wrenched which is preferable for a torch in the u-bolts in the preparatory. Chris Duke: Alright, right on. Let us get with the installation. David Wheeler: Okay. Chris Duke: Now, since we get David here from Hellwig. He is going to show us how to get these bushings under the end links and there is a technique and he is going to take it over and show you how to do it. David--- David Wheeler: Okay, what we are going to do is press the bushing into the loop of the end link. What I would like to do for installation is put the grease around the corner on this out rays section of the arrow grass bushing. So I put the grease on the ray section and what this due does is, eases the installation of the bushing into the loop. Also by putting on the edge here, it is going to be wiping into the in which is actually going to stay in the loop. So after, I put on the grease on, set the bushing on the table, places the loop of the end link over the bushing and press down firmly. That pushes the bushing into the loop and then you can tap it in the rest of the way. Next step is to apply some lube to the sleeve to easy install. Place this lube into the center of the bushing and tap it on with a hammer and you are done. Repeat for an edging of the end link. Chris Duke: We are going to start back here with a rear axel on this vent too; it needs to come off so that we can put this washer underneath it. That is going to give you enough clearance underneath this for the u-bolt. Next, we need to install this u-bolt in the saddle bracket over the cross, remember for the spare tire. The Hellwig recommend that you remove the spare tire first, for ease of installation. The other thing that we need to do is since the exhaust on this truck is after market, we needed to do remove it from here for ease of installation. What we are going to have to do later is rework the exhaust to get around the sway bar, I wanted to tell and install. Attach the end link to the saddle bracket using the provided hardware. This is finger tightening for now. Loop the u-bolt over the rear axel. Watch out for brake ones or anything else that might be in the way. Attach the sway bar to the end links using the provided bolt. Here it goes. Attached the saddle bracket to the u-bolt, and then swing your sway bar up. Attach that to the saddle bracket. Now once you have centred the bar, again, start tightening things up with a 3/4-inch deep socket. That give hand tightening everything you want. Torch it downward with fork wrenched. This gets torch down to 40-foot pounds this is here at 40-foot pounds and this over here is 60. Now we got the rear sway bar on stall, it is time to turn our attention to the front of the truck here. We are going to start by removing the front sway bar from the stock end links. Now we have got the bolts removed from the front sway bar. It is time to take the sway bar down. So here is our stock sway bar from Ford, we will compare that next to the Hellwig which is an 8 of an inch thicker. Now once we put the lubricant inside the bushing, we just slide that on to the front sway bar. And then slide the u-plate over the bushing. And then connects these u-plates to the factory hardware. And finally for the front sway bar, tighten down the front end links. We took a look at reattaching the tilt pipe back up to the truck, but because the sway bar is now on the way, it would not work. So we are going to have to take this to motor shop and have them use some customization on it. Chris Duke: Demonstrating the effectiveness of the sway bar in a vehicle through videos is very difficult but we used our equipment on our F150 through a Slalom Test Drive at 30 mph using half steering rear turns back and forth. The video on the top show us the stock truck while the video on the bottom show us the truck after Hellwig sway bars have been installed. Now here are the same two clips that is played side by side for a different prospective, slow down by 50%, I am going to slow it down again by another 25% and then freeze it on this frame right here to show you the amount of travel and the leaning to the right is much more significant with the stock vehicle and you can see that on the back of the truck. For a completely different video prospective, we mounted a camera on the passenger side door into the right front tire. If you use the chrome part of the bumper as a guide, you can see that there is much more trouble on the stock truck. Now in case you missed it, I will show that video again by slowing it down 50% and