Tbar crank difference from side to side

I know through reading the threads that how much you crank the tbars will be different from rig to rig and even side to side, but why would it vary so much? I've got 2.5 cranks on the drivers to get to 23.25 and the passenger is at 5 rotations on the bolt - seems to me they should be more consistent...

I suspect that you if you were to do 1 turn on the left, 1 on the right, the two numbers might be closer. Turning the passenger bolt, while primarily raising the passenger side, also affects the driver's side and vice versa. For example, if you raised the passenger side 2", wouldn't you expect the driver's side to come up a bit?

I wouldn't be surprised if you could get another turn on the driver's side w/o really affecting the height of the truck.

This is all speculative, but it does tie to recent experience as I've been adjusting my torsion bars a lot as I play with my failing passenger side torsion bar.

Thanks for the feedback alrock - I started slow - with 2 cranks on the driver side... then it took the 5+ to balance on the passenger side. I noticed the drivers going up as well after a point trying to balance on passenger side and actually found I needed to LOWER the driver's side to get a balance at 23.25. I have half a mind to crank down and start over, but to be honest, I kinda lost track of the crank totals. I finally got a balance, so I'll bounce it around a little over the next couple days and see what happens. Have a good one -

You did better than me. I could not get the two sides to match up yesterday when I put in replacement torsion bars. I would turn one bolt, drive around, adjust again, repeat a few times. Each side is close but not exact. Like you said, adjusting one side changed both sides

Is this a situation where new keys would be a solution? Wouldn't that compensate for "stubborn" torsion bars?

yesterday I got reminded of an issue that you might have missed.

I was working on one side a-arm (to get at the cross member bolt) and I pushed the lower a-arm up with my screw jack.... while I did that, I noticed the opposite side was moving up. wtf? I wondered... nothing was connected at the torsion bars.

(d'oh warning)


then I realized that the lower control arms are tied together with the sway bar

the bolts should be even unless you have 4 wheel scales to determine where the weight is (you do want a jack under the rear pumpkin so that you can balance the suspension. Otherwise, you'll have unequal steering one way to the other (great for NASCAR) because you're doing what NASCAR does which is corner jacking.

and yeah, it took me a minute or three to realize what was happening (d'oh)

H3ATH3N said:

Is this a situation where new keys would be a solution? Wouldn't that compensate for "stubborn" torsion bars?

Click to expand...

No, as the springs are worn out. Basically you keep turning and turning until the spring holds, which is probably the breaking point. New keys would not help as they would still twist until failure

Superbuick, that is a Doh! moment. Never thought of that before. Perhaps we should be undoing one link before cranking torsion bars.

Either way the new bars are holding showing that my old bars had failed.

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Just got my wheels and tires on yesterday - took ol' H3NRI3TTA in for her alignment and the guys at Firestone were amazed how whacked out of specs I was.