When I bought my LJ this past December, it was almsot bone stock. No evidence that it had been taken offroad, and only a few minor issues that needed to be fixed up. For a guy like me, it was the perfect used Jeep. I had traded my 2013 JK that I thoroughly enjoyed, but found the expense to be prohibitive to my enjoyment of the vehicle, with the hopes that the lower payment would give me some wiggle room in the monthly finances. Both to make life easier, and to give me a little money to throw into the Jeep. So far it’s working. Monthly expenses are a little lighter, and I’ve been able to modify a few minor things on the LJ to make it a little more trail friendly.
Recently, I dumped the biggest expense to date (with th exception of the tires I replaced, which needed replacement anyway) into the LJ. A Currie Enterprises AntiRock sway bar replacement. The LJ is, as I mentioned, otherwise mostly stock. Which means stock suspension. I was back and forth internally over whether I should just go with the cheap method of buying some disconnects, or dump the money into a nice solution like the AntiRock. After some reading, I’d convinced myself that the AntiRock was the right solution, I just needed to fund it. Well I finally did, and this past Friday morning, I ordered my AntiRock from Quadratec. That evening, I received my shipment notice, and the very next freaking day, I had the AntiRock on my door step. Kudo’s to Quadratec for their fast order fulfillment.
Saturday evening I started the Install. It seems easy enough. Remove the bumper, remove the old sway bar, and then follow a few easy sounding steps to install the AntiRock. The AntiRock installs in the frame cross-member that runs across the very front of the LJ’s frame, right behind the front bumper. You install two plastic inserts into the ends of the tube crossmember, which act sort of like end caps, then you drive the sway bar through the holes in the caps, straight through to the other end of the cross member. Then attach the AntiRock arms on the ends of the bar, and attach the included links to the axle. This sounded simple enough, and their directions are pretty good, so I’m not going to give you a step by step. I will give you a few tips though.
Driving things home
The sway bar is a little tough to get through the end caps. I ended up coating the inside of the hole in each cap with grease. Then one end of the sway bar as well. Then I lined the greased end up with the hole in the end cap, and hit the far end with a ribber mallet. This was working, but I found that a brass hammer also did the trick, and did a much better job of it, as the brass hammer was heavier, and didnt require as much effort to swing, as it rebounded off of the steel of the bar nicely enough that I didn’t need to do much more than control the swing.
Once you get the larger end of the bar through, you have a much smaller diameter bar to deal with, so you can just slide it through until it contacts the far end. At that point, I took a pointy rat tail file (a screq driver, drift, or just about anything else pointy would also do fine) and stuck it through the hole, and into the threaded hole in the end of the bar. I used that to line up the end of the bar with the hole in the cap. Then I went back to the other end, and hammered some more. It didn’t take much to get things into place.
End Links
The folks at currie must expect you to already have a decent lift on your rig, because the end links they provide are way too long. The instrcutions tell you to attach the arms to the end of the bar, and then clock them so they’re at the same position. Then line them up so theyre level with the frame. Then meausre from the center of the middle mounting hole on the arm (There are 5 of them) to the center of the sway bar mount on your front axle housing. Then, adjust the provided links to that length, and install them. Well, on a stock height suspension, I measured about a 5″ link. The links that came with the kit were 8.5″ of threaded rod, and then probably another .75″ of rod end on each end. They say to cut down the threaded rod, but i Looked at it, this seemed impossible. Even if i cut the rod down to the shortest length possible and still retained enough thread to install the jam nut and rod end, it would be 7-8″ long.
I pondered for a bit, and then realized that the old sway bar links from my JK were still on the shelf. I’d installed quick disconnects on it, and they went with it when I traded it in. They happened to be the perfect lenght. So I worked it out, and installed those instead. They are not the perfect solution, and I wouldn’t recommend this, as they don’t fit quite right, but I have a new trick in the works. I looked around online, and found that Currie makes shorter links, but even those only come as short as 6.5″. This would be much better than the 8.5″ I have, but not ideal. The trick is that these threaded rods are LH thread on one end, and RH thread on the other. So a replacement would need to be the same. A thread I came across on Jeep Forum, lead me here. I’ve ordered a set of thei threaded links listed there, and I will report back on how they work.
Results
Even with the not so optimal JK links in place, I was able to get the Jeep out and test the AntiRock. it works very well. You can feel a slight bit of body roll on the highway, but it’s certainly better than having the sway bar outright disconnected. In fact it seems to me that the AntiRock lets your suspension roll with the bumps and whatnot in the road better. The body of the jeep is no longer forced to follow along with every imperfection in the road. The last part of the install is adjusting your AntiRock, which I’ll do more thoroughly once I have those other links to install. The JK links rub when I turn my tires to full-lock. I think I can solve this by moving the upper link back one notch in the arm. Again, I’ll do this once I get the other links to install. As for offroad performance, well, it certinaly does flex:
