Fitting and Review of By'Gone Auto's Anti Roll Bar

ghce

Well-Known Member
Today was the day, I could no longer resist the new bar leaning on the garage wall, distracting my every thought of work income and customer responsibility.
Ignoring the factories service manuals assertion that this could be removed and refitted with out removal of the either the passenger or drivers side front wing I proceeded to lift the car on my Trolley Jack at the front cross member and chocked under the sills with an assortment of crap that was laying on my garage floor as I had tossed my perfectly new axle stands out a couple of years ago.



Did some one say clay bricks :shock:





Road wheels removed I now had access to the attachment points of the front wing, firstly removing the top 1/2 inch bolt located by the bonnet hinge after having marked the peripheral edge of the mounting bracket with a felt marker pen so that I could get the same spot back when refitting the panel. Next to remove was the 2 forward 1/2 inch bolts that are directly behind the front light cluster inside the wing these were then followed by the 2 7/16 inch bolts washes and clamping bracket that attache the lower edge of the wing to the front valance, please not all of these bolts have flat and spring washes from the factory. Two screws, Philips head, are located under the sill and attach to the rear bottom of the wing via a riveted plate, these need removal and also have large flat washes on then.

It is important that before you remove the wing that you isolate the chances of damaging the paint work on the rear edge of the front bumper, I slid several pairs of sock over the bumper to this affect.

You are now ready to remove the wing, first in the process is to slide the wing forward to release it from it's locating dowel located lower mid the rear edge of the wing, it can be fairly tight!
Once accomplished you will need to remove the 3 wires that go to the park and indicator lights by unplugging the bullet connectors then you can move the wing somewhere safe.






sorry about the bad shot




Now every thing is very very straight forward, simply unbolt the 4 1/2 inch bolts that retain the ARB mounting caps, good luck getting a socket in there, I couldn't and so used a long ring spanner, these bolts have spring washers but no flat washers, withdraw the the old ARB.



It is essential that when you refit the new ARB bar that the mating surfaces of all the components are very clean so a good wire brushing of the caps and mounting point and also your new ARB bar to remove any debris to stop any looseness or fretting.
Installation of the new ARB is easy, just slide the new one in and refit caps making sure you progressively wind the bolts up in staged way, the service manual says 30 ft/lbs is the required torque, not easy to guess if you only have a ring spanner as I mentioned getting a socket on these suckers is not easy unless you have a crows foot attachment.



Refitting the wing is the reverse of removal accept you will swear and curse trying to get the 2 front 1/2 inch bolts back in, one way to alleviate the problem is to insert a stubby screw driver or similar thick shanked bar into one of the two bolt holes to try and locate for the other one, still took me a considerable time and lots of swearing at the production development team at sollihul.

Once the road wheels were refitted I took the car for a test drive only to find all my favorite high speed roundabouts were all clogged with the start of peak hour traffic however with about 20 minutes of round town lower speed roundabouts I can say that the excursion of body roll is less by a noticeable degree however I can't really say its such an improvement at this stage until I can go thru my favourite 100 KMH high speed roundabouts when the traffic clears.

Mal Clarke of By'Gone Autos has said it is essential to recheck the tightness of the ARB mounting bolts after about 100 KM's

More later when the road traffic dies away.

Graeme
 
Nice one Graeme. I have a hunch that it might have been easier to get at the ARB bolts if you'd left the car standing on it's wheels though.
 
testrider said:
Nice one Graeme. I have a hunch that it might have been easier to get at the ARB bolts if you'd left the car standing on it's wheels though.

Yes indeed, with the weight on the bell crank the nuts will rotate to a better space to get a socket on but I was not so concerned with that today as I have to locate my torque wrench which currently is at I think another property or maybe mine but some what lost in the confusion of my recent shift of house :LOL: When I do a re tighten in about 100KM's I will have to see if with the road wheels fitted I can get a torque wrench in the limited space to get the 30 ft/lbs.

Graeme
 
After the traffic died down this evening I went out for another sortie on the motorway round a bouts and did notice significant improvement, if you are expecting performance equaling a modern you maybe a little disappointed.
To me the P6 handling in hard corners and bends can be described by roll, spring induced pitch and tire wall movement, the roll which the thicker bar controls is greatly reduced so much so that in hard cornering I can now more readily feel tire sidewall movement and of course the uneven spring compression with the effect of the cornering.
It's not at a moderns standard but I feel it is closer, perhaps increasing the spring compression ratings will give a true modern feel but I do worry that some of the character of smoothness and a very compliant ride might get lost in the process however that all said the P6B's springing is very soft by any modern standard.


Graeme
 
rockdemon said:
Wow didn't realize they were that easy to fit!
Even quicker if you leave the car on the ground, just take one wing off :wink:
That's if you're lucky with the bolts like Graeme was. Mine were fine too, but I have heard of them snapping
Good result Graeme, are you considering uprating shocks or springs at some stage to compliment?
You have 14" alloys don't you, how much rubber do you have on the road?
It will be good to do comparisons with different configurations of wheel/tyre size, standard shocks/springs etc when used with an uprated bar :D
ps did you measure the thickness of the bar yet?
Jim
 
corazon said:
rockdemon said:
Wow didn't realize they were that easy to fit!
Even quicker if you leave the car on the ground, just take one wing off :wink:
That's if you're lucky with the bolts like Graeme was. Mine were fine too, but I have heard of them snapping
Good result Graeme, are you considering uprating shocks or springs at some stage to compliment?
You have 14" alloys don't you, how much rubber do you have on the road?
It will be good to do comparisons with different configurations of wheel/tyre size, standard shocks/springs etc when used with an uprated bar :D
ps did you measure the thickness of the bar yet?
Jim

The Bar is meant to be 24 mm, I didn't measure it, apparently they had problems with the thicker bars snapping.
The shocks are Munroes, fitted not long ago, they made a huge difference compared to the tired Woodhouse OEM's though these shocks may well not be the best, apparently the Konies are an improvement so long as they have the right direction of valving for the front shocks.
I am a little worried that if I change springs I will loose the character of the ride.
Currently the tyres are 205/75/14's, these to were a huge improvement in handling and braking performance compared to the 185/82HR that were on the car.

When talking to Mal on the phone he had an extensive knowledge of the various spring rates on standard cars and had played around with many different custom springs to get the handling correct for his race p6 and had plenty of advise as to how to get what was required and the spec that needed to be met.
He had other suspension and steering mods as you might well imagine for the track car.
I can see that I will be chatting again to Mal, such a font of knowledge for modified P6's

Graeme
 
As a bit of a follow up on this as I have been using the P6 a bit more of late and also because the Blighty ARB project seems to be in a bit of a dead spot at the moment.
I have been as said using the car some what more over the Christmas New Year period and whilst driving and cornering the car I cant help but see the huge difference the new Bar has made, my entry and exit speeds from round'a'bouts has increased substantially to the point where I now more than exceed in speed most other modern car users and all with out any dip'n'roll that previously was there and that we are all familiar with.

Graeme
 
Back
Top