Rear sway bar bushings

[Ric]

Anyone know where to get correct bushings and straps for the REAR sway bar on my 71 cuda, yes I know they are spot welded in place but someone has to be replacing these some how.. thanks

[Dakota]

Replacements don't exist for an ebody as far as I can tell after looking for the last 4-5 years.  I ended up drilling out the welds and replacing them with modern ones.

[Katfish]

How did you reattach the strap?

[76orangewagon]

Drill out the spot welds then weld them back together. I soaked the bushings in PB Blaster for a day and they became soft and pliable again.

[anlauto]

After all that work, what did you gain by using the old bushings ?

[Dakota]

How did you reattach the strap?

@Katfish :  Pardon the delayed response to your question.   Let me say up front that my welding and fabrication skills are pretty limited, but here's what I did:   

After drilling out the welds on the original bushing brackets to separate them from the mounting brackets.   I drilled holes through the mounting bracket, cut off the heads of some bolts and then tacked the threaded sections onto the mounting brackets.   Out of concern that the threaded sections would get pulled out under load, some extra weld material was left around the base of the bolt (too much weld material on the backside would keep the mounting brackets from mounting tight to the frame rail).  Some small spacer plates where made to keep the nuts for the bushing bracket from hitting the extra weld material.   The bushing brackets that came with new Energy Suspension sway bar bushings were cut and re-welded so that they were shorter and matched the length of the original mounting brackets.   

The new bushing brackets ended up shifted towards the upper portion of the mounting brackets.   This was done to match the centerline of the original bushing brackets.   I'm not sure it was really necessary to do this, but it seemed like a good idea at the time.

[Katfish]

Nice work, that does look good.

Thx