I am in the process of putting a Dusting boat on an 04 Road King. Have pretty much completed everything (chassis, mounts etc) but before we look at the mounts for the boat I was thinking about an anti-sway bar. Have read the posts on this and other forums but can anyone tell me if they feel there is a good position for the bar forward from the hack axle or bike axle centre?
Considering both swing arms are different lengths and wheel lead etc I was wondering if there was a place in the middle. I.e.: 5.5” (sidecar lead 11””) and a measurement forward say 10” that they would start at for the crossing of the anti sway bar? (of course if both are trailing
I understand that there are factors such as torsion bar diameter and suspension to consider. Any suggestions would be much appreciated.
This fitting Sidecar’s is hard work!!!
Thanks, Tim.
If the swaybar is to be mounted in front with the torsion arms running to the rear it will almost always be mounted on an angle.
To me if the link attachment points on the swingrms are the same distance from each swingarm pivot that is not a bad thing. That way any suspenion movement on the bike or sidecar will produce the same movement in the swaybar if it's arms are the same length side to side. Is this 'correct'? Probably up for argumant as we are dealing with a vehicle here that is not only non symetrical in looks but also one that has different suspension propertties in left and right turns and so on. The jury will probably never be in on the 'correct' way to mount a swaybar across the board.
I have extended the sidecar swingarm in some cases to get better action for the swaybar. Think on that . I do not know what a Dusting suspension is like.
Note that we have also done some rear mounted swaybars that ran straight across the rear of the rig. This can work well also and allows a straighter movement of the swaybar arms when being loaded and unloaded.
You may want to try the rig a while with no swayabar and see how it does. I see you are in Austrailia. If you are going to be running a lot of rough roads you might like it with no swaybar on it.
Thanks Claude thats a great help. will look at it today. As for the susspension we are just using rubber trailer susspension at the moment and this may change down the track. Building from scratch and dificult to get anything here. I've heard DJP just use the rubber susspension so thought I'd start with that.
Tim
Wish I coudl be of more help but there are a lot of varaibles etc. If you have the principle of what a swaybar does you can probably work things out well. Make darn sure that whatever method you hook it up to the swingarms with is plenty strong.
Hello Tim,
my first MZ s/c had a sway bar with a very soft and long sidecar suspencion. It was awful to drive without the sway bar (translation from German is torsion bar).
On my actual Velorex s/c there is no sway bar but suspension is shorter and way stiffer beside the lower weight. It handles perfect and I wonder that I not even miss a swaybar. So it seems that there is no rule, it simply seems to depend on the actual arrangement, drivers weight, road type, driveing style and what ever may come up as influenceing factor.
I think as more suspension travel and as softer are sidecar and bikes suspension the more a swaybar is recomended. On an unsymetrical arrangement (I actually will inspect this week a couple of Kawa 650 single enduros as work horse instead of the Jawa 350 Style / BMW way too expensive!) with a lot of suspension travel on the bike and little on the s/c I am pretty sure that the sway bar lever on the bikes Sidecar will need to be longer then the one on the sidecar in the same relationship as the lenght of the suspension travels.
Best Regards
Sven Peter
