Nissan Spec-V: Part 9: Installing Sway Bars
9/17/2006
Part of any good handling package includes the anti-sway bars. Sway bars help resist body roll and keep the car flat in corners. For racing, adjustable sway bars are important because adjusting the stiffness of the front or rear bars helps adjust the amount of under- or oversteer a car will exhibit under hard cornering. Adjustable bars are critical because they can be adjusted at the track faster than other methods.
When we started our project, we knew sway bars would be a problem, the choices for the Spec-V are very limited and the only adjustable bar was a simple bolt-on. We drew on our racing experience and adapted parts from stock car racing and other sources.
For a rear bar, we used this racing sway bar from Speedway Engineering. This is an actual racing part and requires finish fabrication to install it. 
Ritchie Watanabe modified our chassis to use this bar. Watanabe drilled the arms for multi-adjustment points so we could easily vary the bar’s stiffness. 
He also routed the bar through our trunk to simplify the mounting by avoiding the fuel tank and exhaust system
Watanabe fabricated the chassis mounts for the bearings supporting, the sway bar and brackets on our beam axle for the spherical bearings connecting the bar to the axle. 
As a result, we have a rigid rear bar with many adjustment points and many options for stiffness with other bars of differing wall thickness available from Speedway Engineering.The front bar was also a huge challenge for the build team at Technosquare. On the Spec-V the front sway bar is mounted very closely to the lower control arm. There is no room for conventional end links that allow for adjustments. The entire front of the car is also crowded so there is no easy place to mount a Speedway racing bar without sacrificing a great deal of ground clearance. Progress custom-built a 27mm diameter solid bar for our project (the stock bar is 24.5mm and hollow) but it was not adjustable.
Watanabe welds in the mount after transferring the pattern to steel and cutting it out.
To get clearance the end links pass though slots machined into the lower control arm. The control arm was reinforced to make up for the weakening caused by the slots.
The final product shows the blades welded to the Progress sway bar, the reinforced control arm and the clearance slots.It takes a great deal of work to make the sway bars on a Spec-V adjustable, but the end result will be a faster, more versatile and easier set up.
Technosquare cut the ends off the Progress bar and welded adjustable blades on the ends. To get clearance for the spherical bearing end links we had to build mounts on the bottom of the control arm.