hey everybody my name is Justin welcome back to the pitlane garage we have a
small project for you today we're going to be installing my Mann engineering
adjustable rear sway bar onto the BRZ as you can see the car is already up on the
Quickjack we've got it taken apart a little bit I actually attempted to do
the MCS suspension installation but it didn't happen unfortunately I made a
gamble on some parts that I thought I might have needed but I didn't buy them
and I actually did need them and we also had an issue with one of the other
Raceseng parts for the camber plates that I have on the car here that didn't quite
fit right so I've got a little bit more research to do in gathering a couple
more parts before we can do that installation hopefully that will happen
next weekend but for today we're going to do a preliminary suspension
installation and put this man engineering rear sway bar on the car and
also actually the Racer X adjustable rear end links that go with it
so we'll go ahead real quick and show you what's going on this place is a mess
still I have half of my car apart well not half of the car the suspension off
of the car the rear shock is still sitting here on the bench the part that
I am missing is actually these helper springs or tender springs they're called
this is my Racecomp Tarmac 2 shock and this is the MCS shock that I was
test fitting everything you'll see without the helper spring and the shock
is at full length if you see they're about the same length as the Tarmac - so
that would be a full droop situation and there is no threads left down here on
the shock body so I need to get these helper springs that is the part that I
gambled on I didn't think I was gonna need them for the MCS
shocks because they're a slightly different design but I do need that
helper spring so we have adjustability in the shocks both for the front and the
back and then that Raceseng part that I had mentioned for the camber plates is
this little spring perch bushing right here the bottom of this bushing actually
fits the bearing based spring perch that comes with the Raceseng camber plates
actually doesn't come with them it's an option to have an upgraded spring
perch versus the standard spring perch like this guy here where there's no
bearing in the actual perch the bearing based perch gives it a little bit more
freedom of movement and supposedly less noise so that's what I have that's what
I want to use because it is the nicer spring perch so I have to do some
finagling with the spring perch bushing and some of the spacers that came with
the MCS kit to get the setup correct it's a real critical part to the
suspension installation so we're gonna figure that out so that we have it all
ready to go for the MCS suspension install hopefully next week now before I
can get started I got to make a little bit of room my garage in my house is a
mess like I had mentioned I have so many projects going on not just car projects
but house projects we're actually getting ready to have our kitchen
remodeled so half of my garage is full of cabinets and supplies and you can see
I've got the go-kart in here as well so all kinds of stuff taking up space
actually show you another project going on around the back here might have
mentioned this in one of my other videos but we have little garage space and I
did not want to spend the money to add a - what's up Mack what's up Shelby what you
guys doing Mack Mack come here come here
alright no - so I wanted to have a garage addition on the side of the house here
but I do not want to spend the money so we did the next best thing I've got a
gigantic shed in the back here being built it's mostly built as you can see
this will be a place where we can store additional car parts I'm actually going
to be sticking our junior race cart back here it is pretty large Shelby you want
to open it up
you got it so we do have quite a bit of space in here should be good can put
some more tires because I need tire space always need tire space just some
other car parts in general that I've got stashed up in the garage and there's no
light in here but anyways that's a little quick recap of what's going on
with the house we'll get back in the garage here and start on that
Mann engineering swaybar
alright so we can start popping this thing off here
I think you guys have seen me do this on my channel already but yeah rear sway
bars are pretty simple actually gonna loosen this with a wrench
alright so the rear sway bar is now out I'll show you the differences between
the OEM bar and the new Mann engineering bar and the mounts it's quite a bit
different but first I wanted to show you something on the back of the car if you
guys remember when I changed the sway bar on this thing the last time the sway
bar mounting nuts on the mount bracket stripped out and at least a couple of
them did and it didn't go too well ended up having to put bolts on the back of
the sway bar mounts bolts or nuts on the back of the sway bar mounting bolts but
this time while that was in there I went ahead and re-threaded the threads with a
tap and die kit and you can kind of see threads being re-threaded right now
so that's working out actually got those mounting nuts that are welded on to the
back of the sway bar mounted brackets cleaned up the new bolts will fit in
there just fine and I'll still probably put nuts on the back of it just to be
extra safe so those don't wiggle out of there but that was a good thing to get
fixed I'm glad that actually worked out and those threads got cleaned up let's
move back into the garage here I'll show you the differences between the sway
bars themselves so you have the OEM bar up on the top with the OEM bushing and
mounting bracket you'll notice it's pretty puny compared to the new mount
bracket and the new bushing this is the new mount bracket and bushing and
actually has a reinforcement plate that goes on the front side of the sway bar
mount bracket just to reinforce that area and then of course the bar itself
we have the three holes for adjustability you'll notice this bar is
just slightly thinner than the OEM 14mm bar now this is the OEM sway
bar that is from the 2016 and earlier cars not the 2017 cars the 2017 car has
a 16mm rear sway bar I put on that OEM 14mm sway bar in
the rear a while back so go into the man engineering bar I think it's a 13mm
bar but again adjustable and stiffness so it gives you a little bit
more tuning options with that rear bar so we'll start getting this rear sway
bar put together I got to get the new Racer X end links attached to the sway
bar and then the bushings on the sway bar I actually have to measure the stock
end links that I had on there previously and I want to make sure that my new
Racer X end links are roughly the same length that way the alignments are
actually the corner balancing doesn't get too out of whack even though I'm
actually going to be taking the car back to the shop to get totally corner
balanced and realigned once all of this stuff is done the sway bar and the
suspension so let's get these parts on here and then we can get the sway bar
back into the BRZ
all right there we go we have the sway bar set up the end links on and let me
tell you these Racer X end links look super sweet
and we have the bushing on these things have these fancy little teflon liners
instead of having to use like a grease or a lube on the bushing you just throw
that liner on before the bushing and it snaps over it and that allows it to move
nice and freely without any kind of binding or anything on the sway bar bushing
so let's move to the back of the car and get this thing installed
so hopefully you guys can hear me okay this is gonna be the mildly tricky part we've
got to get this supporting block behind the mount here
all right that wasn't too bad we've got that threaded
alright I think we're gonna have to go to the other side and get that started because with the sway bar hanging on the other
end doesn't want my bolt to align properly
alright so
this is a tight fit
of course this damn exhaust pipe
alright so naturally we can't have nice things when
working on cars something always goes wrong that we have to work around
this Blitz exhaust is hitting the back of the sway bar mounts literally like
maybe 2mm of space is all I need for it to clear so I think what
I'll do is just unbolt the muffler on the exhaust real quick see if I can push
it out of the way get the sway bar mounts in place and it's only because
this Mann engineering bar has these big beefy pieces of metal that supports the
sway bar mount bracket between the mounting bushing and the subframe mount
where the mount goes for the sway bar so that's not a bad thing it just adds like
an extra 3/4 of an inch of solid metal between your sway bar mounts
and where the bracket goes so it pushes things back a little bit but we'll get
it fixed here it shouldn't matter even if the exhaust is touching that thing I
mean it is metal on metal I mean it might heat up that rubber a little bit
so I'm kind of concerned but we'll have to see how how close it gets
all right now with this thing pushed out of the way a little bit I can get my
sway bar mounting bracket up in there
all right so that worked it's still a little bit too tight or too close for my
liking I'll show you guys what it looks like here so you can kind of see where
it's hitting just the back of the mounting bracket I don't think it'll be
a huge deal it won't interfere with the sway bar functionality in any way but it
is a little bit too close for my liking so maybe a new exhaust is in store for
2018 I don't know but now let's get the other side of this thing on and then we
can attach the sway bar end links to the lower control arms
all right you guys can't see it very well down in here but the way you attach
these Racer X and links is you put these little spacers on each side of the lower
ball joint and then the bolt goes through all put it on camera here I
don't know if you'll be able to catch anything but we'll give it a try
all right we have the man engineering rear sway bar installed let's take a
closer look at the finished product
all right everybody and that does it for this installation video the Mann
Engineering adjustable rear sway bar on my Subaru BRZ I'm really pumped about
this one with all of the rear grip issues I've had with this car in
autocross it's going to be real handy to have an adjustable sway bar on the rear
end we can soften it up or stiffen it up with just a couple bolts makes it real
easy to make tuning changes while you're out at the course doing an autocross or
even while you're out at the track so we're down one step closer to getting
the MCS suspension installed on this bad boy once I finally get my crap together
and have all the parts I need we're gonna get that stuff installed and it
should be pretty awesome I'm looking forward to that one
it's been a long time since I got these shocks unboxed and they've been sitting
here in the garage but we're gonna get it done soon so thanks again everybody
for watching I really appreciate it if you have any thoughts or comments like
always please leave them down below I would love to hear from you
remember stay fast out there I'm checking out talk to you all next time