Today was a good day.
Remember last week when it took us roughly four hours to get four nuts off the old power brake booster? Yeah, that kinda sucked. Today though…today was a totally different experience.
We had originally planned on changing out (or at least starting to change out) the brake lines today. Unfortunately, even though 213,244 boxes of brake parts were delivered to my house this week, the brake lines decided not to be in any of them. UPS says I should (naturally) have them tomorrow.
So, we went with Plan “B”:
That is a 1 1/8 inch diameter front anti-sway bar – and its associated installation accessories. Anti-sway bars (or stability bars) are used to help keep the car from swaying from side to side during turns. Here’s an example of the difference anti-sway bars can have in a car’s cornering:
I vividly remember my old Mustang’s inability to corner. I want my new Mustang’s handling to be better, so I decided to purchase a much stiffer anti-sway bar and install it to see how much difference it makes. Here’s a shot at the difference between the two bars. The stock anti-sway bar is on the top and the new (and much thicker) one is on the bottom:
Here’s a wider-angle shot:
An anti-sway bar is held in by four bolts that attach to the chassis and one bolt on each side of the car that affix the bar to the suspension.
Six bolts in total. We’re doomed, right?
Not Today!
The following was accomplished in about an hour and a half:
Everything went disturbingly smooth. I’m sure we did something wrong, but as far as we can tell, the old bolts came right off and the new stuff easily bolted right back on.
At one point, we stopped for a moment and contemplated something really cool. The only thing we’ve really done so far on the Mustang is take stuff off. Today we changed that. Today we were putting something on. Something that was going to stay on.
That was a hell of a nice realization.
The Mustang Restoration 