I have bought the new rod ends for the antiroll bar vertical links, fitting them to the rods with some coper grease on the threads to make sure future replacement is easy. The chassis mounting brackets came back from the fabricator and he did a great job on them, including spraying them with Galvafroid. The D-bush clamps fitted perfectly, and by chance the 13.8 high tensile bolts were the perfect length that they engaged fully on the captive nuts without needing to be trimmed or have clearance holes drilled in the underside of the chassis rails.
Of course, with things working out as smoothly as that, something had to go wrong. Trying to fit the brackets after drilling their 10mm fixing bolt holes was impossible, with it quickly becoming apparent that the snug fit was not the issue and that something was blocking them. That something transpired to be the bottom of the fuel tank mounting brackets on the inboard sides of each chassis rail. Unfortunatley, I can’t just slot the bar brackets to accomodate the fuel brackets because the fuel bracket runs through the centreline of the aft bolt holes.
I don’t want to omit the aft bolts and am not willing to trim off the bottom of the fuel tank brackets. I also won’t be redrilling new holes further forward and trimming the clashing area because that would put the top and aft bolts too close together for my liking, causing a potential weakness in the chassis rails once they’re drilled to match the brackets.
So, the solution is to have another pair of brackets fabricated, identical in all dimensions except for having a 1″extension aft. This will allow the upper and front bolts to use the same poitions, the D-bush clamp to sit in the same position, but the aft bolt to fit behind the fuel tank mounting bracket. The new brackets should be finished by the weekend, so I should be able to fit everything on my next bunch of days off (weather permitting).
Hi Nick
Firstly I want to thank you for investing so much time in such a great blog.
I have a series 2A I am doing a rebuild on. I see your section on anti roll bar, but I would like to know whether you can point me to any instructions to install into an 88?
thanks in advance Tony
Thank you, Tony.
It may be possible to mount an anti-roll bar in much the same way I did to an 88″, but you will run into a few extra issues:
1) The spring plates already use the stud for the dampers – 109s normally have plain spring plates as their dampers are secured to brackets welded tot he axle case;
2) You may have space issues due to the exhaust pipe system, but the exhaust could be modified to make space;
3) The spring mounts on the 88 rear axle are closer together than a 109 axle, so spring plates modified with stra studs for the anti-roll bar links will be too close together.
To solve problems 1 and 3, your best option would be to weld brackets directly to the axle case for the roll bar vertical links, which would just need to be gusseted tabs with studs parallel to the axle that match the dimensions of the studs on the spring plates but further outboard.
A front Marshal ambulance anti-roll bar should fit directly in exactly the same manner as on the ambulances if you can get all the parts.
Nick