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| TRD's Tundra sway bar kit is full of OEM level quality construction, precise bends with forged one piece ends, urethane bushings, flawless powder coating and rust resistant zinc chromate treatment of hardware. |
Our first round of TRD parts are mild mods that we are installing to improve Project Tundra's safety and ease of use. We first installed TRD's rear sway bar kit. Although Project Tundra handled amazingly well for a high ground clearance, raised suspension 4X4, it still had a large degree of grinding cornering power reducing understeer at the limit of adhesion. Although the stock Tundra's terminal cornering mode is understeer, it is desirable in a heavily loaded working vehicle like this for safety. We wished to reduce the understeer to improve cornering performance without creating oversteer under any circumstance. Adding a rear anti sway bar is the best way to do this as we did not want to increase the rear spring rates.
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| The swaybar end links bolt to the sturdy hitch mount hard points. |
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| Next the bar is bolted to the endlinks. |
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| The axle brackets are fitted. |
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| A MotoIQ tip, wrap teflon tape around the sway bar where the bushings ride for a smoother quiet ride. |
The TRD rear bar is a fairly stout 1″ in diameter. Most companies make simple rear sway bars that simply clamp to the leaf springs but the TRD bar attaches to the axle then directly to the chassis. This is a more direct coupling of the sway bar that is more efficient and effective. The bar bushings are hard polyurethane to minimize squish. The bar end links attach solidly to the sturdy tow hitch mounting points and the bar mounts clamp directly to the axle housing. The fit is superb, just like a well engineered factory part. All hardware is corrosion resisting chromate coated or powdercoated for OEM like rust resistance. After installing scores of anti sway bars over the years from many different manufacturers on many different vehicles, the TRD part fit the best and installed with the least amount of hassle than any of them.
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| Howard Watanabe lubricates the urethane bushings with the supplied silicone grease. |
Our driving impressions of the bar are very positive. Although Project Tundra still understeers steadily, it is not the hard grinding understeer it previously had. Overall the amount of undesteer is reduced by about 50%. The truck also responds faster to steering input and turns in much better. The truck will not rotate even when trail braking but that is not a realistic expectation for a heavy duty work vehicle. The Tundra's job is to get the race car to the track, not to race on the track!
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| Finally we assembled the axle brackets. Note the tight fit. |
The rear bar surprisingly had a few pleasant side effects. It helped to damp out a lot of the axle tramp and single wheel spin we were experiencing on tip in, especially when trying to do a turn from a dead stop. This made the traction control much less active, a great thing. It also made the truck easier to get away without drawing unneeded attention by burning out. The bar had no effect on ride quality nor did it contribute to any sort of squeaks or rattles. Although we haven’t verified this yet, we feel that the bar will reduce any sort of tail wag that a trailer might induce.
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| The TRD Tundra rear swaybar fits better than any we have ever installed! The easy install took us a whole 10 minutes. |
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