COS80
SILVER Star
A couple weekends ago, riding Medano Trail in CO, I suddenly had a horrible rattling noise coming from under the truck. After a couple inspections, I found that the driver's side sway bar mount, where the end meets the axle, had broken off of the axle. The timing was fortunate, because @LandCruiserPhil was just about to release his new Severe Duty Front Sway Bar Mounts, which I've installed on my 80.
The kit is complete, as you see here. You can also see what makes them "severe duty". They are designed to never, ever break.
Despite the fact that you couldn't break them if you tried, they come triple-bubble-wrapped, with a couple of mints as a nice, added touch. Here's the pad on the axle that the original mount broke free from. It looks like it may have been repaired once before, judging by that irregular aft weld.
The kit comes with a massive bolt and nut, intended to take advantage of that central alignment hole and make for an easier installation. The plan was to weld the bracket fore and aft, like Toyota did, plus the bolt, but my 80 has caster correction bushings, which narrow the gap enough that the Nylock nut wouldn't fit at all, and even a regular nut barely fit, so my welder, @Goslow, and I decided not to use the bolts, and welded all four sides instead.
Before welding, we unbolted the shocks and strapped them up, as well as removed the brackets for the hard brake lines on the passenger side, to get more clearance not just for welding, but also for grinding. The PS is especially tight. I think it took 4 different grinders and a drill, with various grinding and wire wheel bits, to get down to smooth, shiny metal on the pad.
Without the central bolt, we chose to pin the opposite side with its bolt, attach the new bracket to the bar with the cross bolt, lower it into place, and then clamp the new bracket down to tack it, basically letting the bar and the unbroken PS bar end mount determine the location of the DS replacement. After welding in the DS, we reversed the approach to position the second one.
Welding
High quality welds!
After welding, I painted everything black and buttoned it back up.
After driving around for a week with the sway bar disconnected and wired out of the way, I'd gotten used to the wobbly ride, so the drive home was great, with the bar back in business. Everything fit perfectly, no rattles, no concerns. Great product!
Here's where it gets weird. In the pic above, you can see that the bar end bushing is broken. Long story short, when I couldn't install the new factory rubber, Randy at Precision LandCruisers immediately identified the reason - that's a Whiteline Extra-HD bar that I didn't even know I had (PO installed it and I didn't know it). I'm currently awaiting replacement bushings (or a whole new stock bar, if Whiteline doesn't have them - I can't find them on their page, and their email response was for the rearward bushings), and then I'm also going to install the LCP sway bar disconnect kit. Phil was great to work with, and he's setting me up with a kit that has the correct pins for the extra width of the severe duty brackets. I'm looking forward to seeing how much more flex I have with this huge sway bar disconnected!
The kit is complete, as you see here. You can also see what makes them "severe duty". They are designed to never, ever break.
Despite the fact that you couldn't break them if you tried, they come triple-bubble-wrapped, with a couple of mints as a nice, added touch. Here's the pad on the axle that the original mount broke free from. It looks like it may have been repaired once before, judging by that irregular aft weld.
The kit comes with a massive bolt and nut, intended to take advantage of that central alignment hole and make for an easier installation. The plan was to weld the bracket fore and aft, like Toyota did, plus the bolt, but my 80 has caster correction bushings, which narrow the gap enough that the Nylock nut wouldn't fit at all, and even a regular nut barely fit, so my welder, @Goslow, and I decided not to use the bolts, and welded all four sides instead.
Before welding, we unbolted the shocks and strapped them up, as well as removed the brackets for the hard brake lines on the passenger side, to get more clearance not just for welding, but also for grinding. The PS is especially tight. I think it took 4 different grinders and a drill, with various grinding and wire wheel bits, to get down to smooth, shiny metal on the pad.
Without the central bolt, we chose to pin the opposite side with its bolt, attach the new bracket to the bar with the cross bolt, lower it into place, and then clamp the new bracket down to tack it, basically letting the bar and the unbroken PS bar end mount determine the location of the DS replacement. After welding in the DS, we reversed the approach to position the second one.
Welding
High quality welds!
After welding, I painted everything black and buttoned it back up.
After driving around for a week with the sway bar disconnected and wired out of the way, I'd gotten used to the wobbly ride, so the drive home was great, with the bar back in business. Everything fit perfectly, no rattles, no concerns. Great product!
Here's where it gets weird. In the pic above, you can see that the bar end bushing is broken. Long story short, when I couldn't install the new factory rubber, Randy at Precision LandCruisers immediately identified the reason - that's a Whiteline Extra-HD bar that I didn't even know I had (PO installed it and I didn't know it). I'm currently awaiting replacement bushings (or a whole new stock bar, if Whiteline doesn't have them - I can't find them on their page, and their email response was for the rearward bushings), and then I'm also going to install the LCP sway bar disconnect kit. Phil was great to work with, and he's setting me up with a kit that has the correct pins for the extra width of the severe duty brackets. I'm looking forward to seeing how much more flex I have with this huge sway bar disconnected!
