Front sway bar and bushings

[Rennfab]

Hi folks,

So working on the shogun here and I need to replace the front sway bar/torsion bar bushings. I find online that for the 1990 Festiva there are bushings available for 22 and 24mm front bars, however on this car the bar in front measures 1" in diameter. Was there a larger bar that swapped into these chassis for those years, or some aftermarket options back then? I am documenting all the parts and related numbers for them during this rebuild, but have not found an OE type bushing yet that fits the 1" bar. The bushings in the car look like the festiva type bushing, just larger ID.

I of course can machine new mounts and use a more modern type swaybar bushing but I am trying to retain as much originality of this car as possible.

Thanks!!

[Rick the Quick]

Hey Renn, I don't think it would be a big deal to open a 24mm bushing to 1 ". I believe 1" = 25.4mm. You are talking about taking less than 1 mm off of each side of the hole. I would imagine this can be done a whole bunch of creative ways. Another possibility would be to get a hold of a book with pictures of bushings and pick one out with a 1" opening. I would think Moog publishes a book with pictures and dimensions of bushings. You may be able to find an online site that would have this information, or better yet try going to the Moog website and you may find your answer.
I would imagine your car being a Shogun came with a larger sway bar. The guys that designed it were pretty sharp. I remember seeing a Shogun on eBay a few years ago. Is this the car that you own?
Rick

[Rennfab]

Hey Renn, I don't think it would be a big deal to open a 24mm bushing to 1 ". I believe 1" = 25.4mm. You are talking about taking less than 1 mm off of each side of the hole. I would imagine this can be done a whole bunch of creative ways. Another possibility would be to get a hold of a book with pictures of bushings and pick one out with a 1" opening. I would think Moog publishes a book with pictures and dimensions of bushings. You may be able to find an online site that would have this information, or better yet try going to the Moog website and you may find your answer.
I would imagine your car being a Shogun came with a larger sway bar. The guys that designed it were pretty sharp. I remember seeing a Shogun on eBay a few years ago. Is this the car that you own?
Rick

Hi Rick

The problem with opening the bushing concentrically and evenly is that there is not easy way to hold the bushing without deforming it. The car was built using an OE bar, but I believe at some point in it's life this may have been upgraded to an Aspire bar. I found a source online that provided a 26mm bushing to fit an "austrailian WB aspire", which look like the OEM bushing but have a large opening. Time will tell when they arrive here.

As far as Shoguns on ebay.......I have never seen nor ever heard one of the original Shoguns being legitimately up for sale on Ebay. There are only four know to still be kicking around....the yellow prototype(owned by Beck himself right now), number 2(mine), number 3(Jay Leno's), and number 7(the purple one, it's in colorado) There is a guy who had located the 8th body kit that was built, and finished his own Shogun dubbing it the number 8(it's white). While it is not one of the actual 7 shoguns built, it might as well be as he did an impressive job. He contacted me a few years ago when looking to replicate the decals and I sent him all the specs on them from my car.

the other shoguns...1, 4,5,6 I have no idea where they went to or where they are. 1 is red, 4 is another blue one like mine, 5 and 6 i have no idea what color they are.

[nonamekid]

Do you have any pictures of the swaybar that is in the car right now? The aspire bar looks different than the festiva ones. They also adversely affect the handling of a festiva. All North American festiva has 22mm swaybars. The Festiva GTA, GT, and GTX had 24mm swaybars. The North American aspires all got 26mm swaybars: I have not seen any of the 24mm bars on aspires. The aspire bushing is different from the Festiva ones due to the change in brackets. If you have an aspire bar with aspire brackets, the 26mm bushings will work fine. On a future note: all of these bushings are stocked at The Festiva Store.

[Rennfab]

it is in fact an aspire bar on the front, but it doesn't adversely affect the handling of this car. this car handles exceptionally well for a rear engined machine with this much power and I come from a world of of aircooled 911 turbos. From what I can gather at some point in it's life someone swapped out the oe festiva bar for this one, presumably at the shoshop when the supercharger was added back in the mid to late 90's. The 7 cars were originally built with an oe front sway according to Chuck Beck, an dI don't even think this bar was available at the time the cars were built in 1990.

You also have to note, that there is nothing stock in the suspension of this car festiva wise aside from the front steering rack. Everything else is SHO Taurus components: knuckles, hubs, control arms, end links, etc. The struts are custom coil overs as well. weight distribution is completely different and this car as substantially more tire underneath it than your average modded festiva.

wish I had known about that festiva shop website prior to buying these bushings. I bought the exact bushing that's listed on there for 26mm bars and they fit the bar and brackets here perfectly. I would definitely have rather supported a small shop like that than someone else online though :/