oledummy

One of the swaybar brackets on my xj apparently has a boogered up hole for the bolt, and whoever had it before welded it to the frame.I was wondering if the thing is engineered so tight that I can't simply move the brackets front or back an inch or so and drill tap new holes. If that would cause possible problems, would welding 1/4 inch flatbar to the frame and drill/tap holes in the same place
affect anything as they would be 1/4 inch lower. It "seems" to me that neither would make a difference, but then I am here because I don't know.

jordan96xj

First, you might want to mention if this is the front or rear sway bar. I'll assume it is the front. If it is the rear, folks will just recommend that you remove it entirely. Personally, I like having my rear sway bar in place.

You probably can not just drill/tap new holes in a new location. The frame rails are relatively thin, and any where existing bolts are, there is typically reinforcement, additional layers, or welded nuts (of some sort) behind the frame rail to support the fastener (and its threads). So your idea of using additional metal, and drilling/tapping that probably has more merit, and also has the added benefit of letting you use the same location, with just a small amount of increased distance from the frame rail. I don't think 1/4" would make much of a difference, however, I can't be sure, because we are talking about angles over distance. As you might have guessed, a small change at one end of a span, can lead to a large change at the other end. So bringing the mounts of the sway bar down 1/4" at one end is going to increase the angle at which they meet the top of the sway bar links. When the sway bar and links meet at weird angles, they have a tendency to damage the bushings relatively quickly (the bushings get squeezed in weird ways and tend to fail faster, though they are cheap and easy to replace). One side of my sway bar has a weird angle where it meets the top of the sway bar link (it was bent sometime in the past), and that side chews through bushings more often now as a result. Enough so, that I have often thought of replacing the sway bar.

oledummy

[QUOTE=jordan96xj;3516418]First, you might want to mention if this is the front or rear sway bar. I'll assume it is the front. If it is the rear, folks will just recommend that you remove it entirely. Personally, I like having my rear sway bar in place.
Well, I haven't tried to uncover it yet, but just maybe I will get lucky enough such that the hole is not too messed up that I can simply drill a larger hole and tap that.
Thanks for your input.