THE BLUE BIRD BOUNCE

[cmillsap]

(06-03-2013 20:13)davidmbrady Wrote:  That's excellent news Al. You hit the nail square on the head. The bus with the bar has you feeling every pebble on the road. I used to joke with my wife that I could roll over a dime and feel it! Enjoy the new ride!

Hey Ned,

I'm certain BB installed the bar to tighten up the handling, and it does. Without the bar the bus requires a moment to "take a set" in the turns, say when exiting a clover leaf. It's not unlike driving GrandPa's 1957 Cadillac, you need to feed it a good amount of steering and let the coach roll before it starts turning. But, with the bar you still need to do that. This is a 50K lb bus after all, not a Corvette. The trouble with having the bar is that you get the worst of both worlds because you can't keep bushings in it. The bar is so stiff that it quickly shreds the bushings in the vertical links[b]. When that happens then you get this weird non-linear handling. What happens is the bar w/o bushings is super sloppy and is doing nothing at the beginning of a turn, then suddenly it catches as the play is taken up, then the bus becomes darty. I'd rather have a linear progressive roll, with a softer ride. Some folks say a sway bar shouldn't effect the ride quality. Well, when both wheels hit the exact same bump at exactly the same time this is true, but in the real world this is hardly ever the case. I understand the benefits of a well tuned anti-sway bar, and when I get some time on my hands I may experiment with various size bars. There is a size out there that will provide an improvement w/o too much of a compromise. All I know is that the 2.125" diameter bar that BB used isn't the right one!

Also I want to point out that this is personal preference. All you need to do is remove the vertical links and tie the bar snugly up against the frame rails, go for a test drive and make your call. If you like it, then good. If not, then swing it down and connect up the links. No harm done.

I can attest to the pre-mature wear on the anti sway bar bushings. Parliament changed those bushings in November on my bus. They are already quite worn after only about 5000 miles.