Front End Clunk Check the Sway Bar Link

So after watching that little video, you might be thinking, what's the big deal, just a sway bar link? That's a sway bar link, my friends, and it does play a big part in the car, even though it's just a little piece of metal. And I'm going to talk to you about how to diagnose them, how simple it is to change these, and inexpensive, and where you can get them, 1AAuto.com. And we're going to show you what this crazy guy did, he cut it off in reason why.

So it could have laid against here, the tire going down the road. You can see, obviously, that's not good. So when it broke off the top, or could have gone way back here, entangled up with the brake line in the ABS. Look how close it comes right here to the axle. Now that suspension suspension's dropped, if we bring that up, that's really going to ride right there on that CV shaft axle.

So it was pretty smart, like I said, for him to just cut it off down here and get rid of that piece. But now that we have the new one in, I'm going to tighten it up and we'll go down the road.

So here we can see where the sway bar, the gentleman that owns the car cut it off. So you just took a piece of like a sawzall, cut that off, and the reason why is because it popped off the top joint right there. So this is what it looks like up close. Inside here is a pivoting joint, pivots, and this one's new so it's really firm, but it pivots back and forth just like I can show you on this, like that.

And what this does, is it's in its name, it's a sway bar link. So here's the sway bar itself located, and it goes over to the other side, and this exact replica setup is there. And what it does, it stops the vehicle from swaying. Not every vehicle has sway bar links, some have torsion bars, but they all do the same job. They stop you from, when you corner quickly, you have that item in the middle of the road, you're like, oh, and you've got to turn quickly. It stops the car from rolling too much because the center of gravity on a car is above the wheels, so you would actually roll into the next lane or roll off the road. This stops that vehicle from shifting the weight too quickly. It diverts it and keeps it stable, so it's sway bar.

So I want to show you how it's supposed to look and why he cut this, because it goes like that right there, and it popped off the top, came undone. Understandable, but look at what would happen if he drove around, it was just dangling around, going all over the place. Now, is it safe to tie it up there? Well, yeah, but what if that plastic tie comes undone because of the weight shifts, cuts right through it, then boot hits that tire again, or comes down here even worse, gets jammed in there, could fall backwards, break your brake line off.

So he did the right thing, but it's just a matter of being able to know what to do, how quickly to do it. When that happened, that noise was unbelievable. He said he thought the wheel was falling off.

So here we have the passenger

Side, it's still connected, so that's a good visual of what it's supposed to look like, and you can see the sway bar right here, and that's a link, it's attached to the strut. Pretty common, this is how they're usually, 90 of them, set up. They're not as long, some are only this big, some are from the control arm to the sway bar there. They have all different types of mounting and all depends on the vehicle.

So now we're going to show you a split screen of how it looks going down the road, broken and non-broken.

So now I want to show you a close-up of what the end joint looks like on a sway bar link, and yeah, the symptoms, symptoms and the warning signs before this puppy breaks just like this one did. So all those little dots you see are the actual plastic cap. Here, they push it through and they press them on, and that link gets attached to this joint inside, which looks like this.

Now see this wobble? You saw how hard it was for me to do the new one, and this, when it's going down the road, is going to make an actual knocking sound. It's going to go, you know, make a metal to metal, like a, but really loud echoing through the cabin, and that tells you that this joint has way too much play and it's not absorbing the banging on the ground, so it travels through the cab and you can hear it.

So this is what it looks like in there. It's just a little ball joint, right? Little milled out ball on top of a stud, and it goes into a cap that's locked in with grease, sealed, and that allows it to pivot on turning corners, up and down on bumps. And what happens over time, it just wears out. Now you can't feel it, but I'm telling you there's a flat spot in here, it just knocks, it knocks. So that's how it's supposed to be attached, and that's how it looks like going down the road.

But unfortunately for him, this broke off, and most hardest place to do with the tire on the top of the firewall, so pretty dangerous. Simple repair, as you can see, and very, very inexpensive. It's so inexpensive, do it yourself and have fun.

So I hope you enjoyed that video. I enjoyed making it, don't forget, little sounds these things make and how easy they are to install and the importance they do for your car with the sway bar link. So if you need anything, click the link below, no pun intended, and if you're not a subscriber, please subscribe. Don't forget to ring that bell because it turns on all the notifications, you won't miss any future videos. Thanks for watching.

Alright, so I'll stop right here and I'll go, I'll just go from like this and I'll go, this is where the time is spent. Ah, what am I saying, just keep it rolling, what do I say.